The students have painted a big sponge with chopsticks, as if it were a hedgehog. Or maybe you've wanted to represent a birthday cake full of candles. The vacuum tube has been used as if it were a phone, playing each other, saying nonsense to the ear and laughing out loud. But one child has caught little ones and the others have kept leaving the tube. Now yes, no, you're not seeing yourself in the mirror, and I've decided to zoom in. They've explained to me that they look in the mirrors twice reflected, like little Newton who just discovered gravity, full of illusion. In fact, the mirror pieces are not placed at the same inclination. A few minutes later, I've been told that those same little miracles are cards or pool access bonuses. You've imagined that.

Then came the first confrontation of the day: The program needs more mirrors to build the tower that is being built, but it has not managed to reach an agreement with those who have those mirrors as pool cards. Saioa has started to cry and the teacher has come close to reassure her.

However, the main task of Salbatore Mitxelena's professors is the observation, within the Birsortu project: notebook and pen in hand, to look from a corner of the class. The Childhood Education Coordinator, Olatz Zubimendi, and the head of Birsortu, Arantxa Urbe, state that it is a “truly interesting” job. “It’s an opportunity to show that children have much more creativity than adults,” says Urbe. “Children often have intentions that adults don’t understand,” added Zubimendi. The material that has been created for a particular use, or something that adults see only one use, can have a multitude of uses for children, an entrance to the pool or a structural base of a tower. “What would we do with the vacuum tube that has already become obsolete? Throw it away.” The children, however, have seen that it can be used as an antenna and have put it into practice in a moment. Unleashing imagination. We adults are the ones who have “limits”, “which we believe only serves to plug a plug.”

The Birsortu project has a Erroak initiative in Italy in the city
of Reggio Emilia in northern Italy. Local schools have been an example in child pedagogy, especially for the work with 5-year-old boys and girls, and for the projects that have been specially worked in recent years with elementary school students. It launched the Remida initiative in 1996, which served as the basis for the Birsortu project. Defined as a “creative recycling center”, it has already been implemented elsewhere in the world: These include Trondheim (Norway), Frankfurt (Germany), Perth (Australia) and Buenos Aires (Argentina).

“About twelve years ago Hik Hasi’s project for Basque Education began organizing trips to Reggio Emilia, so that the educators here could go there for a week and get to know the project firsthand,” says Urbe. Within Hik Hasi came the idea of creating a similar project, “beyond traditional education, we wanted to work differently to give a tool to educators.” Hik Hasi then opened a deep internal process, and after many years circling that idea, last year became a great opportunity to launch the project, when the Gipuzkoa Foral Council showed its interest and the Emaus Social Foundation announced that it was willing to participate.

Emaus has an important role: to create a collection network in big business centers to collect the material that's going to go in the trash. However, instead of throwing them away, the craftsmen of Gipuzkoa take care of their care and conditioning, cleaning them, classifying them and adapting them to boys and girls. Then, each center decides how to integrate it into its way of doing.

The two teachers have pointed out that the first time the material was distributed they had difficulty in doing so: “At first four centers had to participate, but we asked for fourteen, and it was decided to reach all; each one had a hard time giving what and how much, because there was not one lot for all.” This year it has been possible to install a warehouse for the purchase of the lot, which will make it possible that, in addition to the schools that last year were in Birsortu, the schools of the Léniz Valley where the warehouse is located can go in search of material.

To another dimension, to imagine “We
left all the material in one room and adapted two other rooms, one converted into a space for the theater and the other into a space for painting. Thus, in the mornings the children of the three classrooms have free movement so that everyone can go wherever they want to do whatever they want.” In these moments of childhood fun, as in other subjects, teachers have to observe. “We observe if the student has played, what he has built or drawn, how long, what relationship he has had with the other colleagues, whether he works in the Birsortu space or does not like it…”

The freedom to move from one room to another and the fact that each of these three classes is arranged in one way, are an essential tool for boys and girls to develop their imagination and what they think. Urbe also says that it helps in the socialization process: “The relationships that occur in these places are different, each one acts according to their interests and the circumstances make it possible to unite two boys and girls who would not be found at another time, one because he wants the object that the other wants. It is then that the dialogues, the discussions and, in many cases, the fights and the whims emerge; the child learns to manage these emotions”.

Basically, Birsortu allows for other ways of relating: “The result is not so important,” Zubimendi explained, “but the action and the facts surrounding that action.”

Urbe recognizes that it is an exercise that requires effort on the part of all teachers, to know how to approach the child dimension when observing: “At first it seemed to us that they are doing nothing, but in our head it takes a second and a third lap, and if we ask the creature what it is doing, we will realize the whole story behind it.”

Urbe and Zubimendi have also talked about adult productivity. We remain “with the visible and with the outcome” in many areas of life, and not with the events that take place in this creative process, nor with the illusion of creating or building. “They have painted a great sponge with sticks, but what have they done? They have put their clubs one by one with a lot of illusion, imagining something that only they know.”

“It’s been a challenge for us,” they say. The challenge is to jump from one dimension to another, fill the classroom with unusual materials and free the children; to make, within a few meters and under the gaze of the faculty, the students feel free. Free to work creativity, giving way to imagination.

CHANGE OF THE HOLIDAY MODEL ON THE PORTAL

Me, you… the ikastola to the world! Under the motto "the feast of the ikastolas of Gipuzkoa will be October 6". It is the third time that the ikastola of Zarautz organizes the Kilometroak, and it is the last that is done in the way so far, as from next year they want another party model, as we tell you in the report From consumer to participant.