LA SALLE SAGRADO CORAZÓN – Innovation and Mobile Learning

Type: Private – GENERAL EDUCATION (SECONDARY LEVEL)

School Website: https://lasallemundonuevo.sallenet.org/

Brief Presentation

La Salle Sagrado Corazón is a religious school placed in Jerez de la Frontera, south of Andalusia. It is part of the De La Salle network of schools which extends worldwide covering 81 countries from preschool to university. Over 5,000 Brothers and many thousands of lay partners are continuing the Lasallian tradition in 65 universities and colleges and 92 schools. Lasallian schools and projects globally are open to a respectful attitude of all faiths and cultures and represent the local communities they serve.

Sagrado Corazón is one of the three De La Salle schools you can find in Jerez, founded in 1888. It is situated in a middle-low area where the unemployment rate is high, making the school an important educational reference in the neighbourhood. It is open at weekends to celebrate extra-curricular activities becoming a meeting point for the local people.

The school offers a wide range of studies:

Pre-primary (three to five years old)
Primary (six to eleven years old)
Secondary (twelve to fifteen years old)
High-school (sixteen to eighteen years old)
Vocational studies (sixteen to eighteen years old): electricity, administration and computers. Each vocational course lasts two years and includes internship at a company; even companies abroad by means of KA1 projects.

All secondary and higher-level students are very interested in participating in European projects as they find them really useful for their future careers and to widen their knowledge of Europe and the different cultures found all over it. The vocational students specializing in computer studies will be of great relevance to cover those technical aspects derived from the project and the implementation of it.

Sagrado Corazón has around 40 teachers and 700 students. The headmaster is at the top of the organisation, followed by the assistant headmaster and coordinators of the different stages. The school has an orientation department, a defender of the minor, a therapeutical pedagogue and a speech therapist.

The school offers an education based on human and Christian values such as solidarity, a quality education by thinking critically and examining the world in light of faith, respect the dignity of all individuals, and celebrate diversity welcoming all students. We give inclusive education to students with special needs, as for example Down syndrome, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or Special Educational Needs students. Being all of them 54 in the whole school.

We have worked with a project called HARA for several years. This project´s aim is to help students to achieve some more reflexive and ethical criteria, a self-interiority that leads them to get a compromise. There is a quality system that evaluates the work done in the school every year called La Salle Indivisa which certifies the quality in the education of the school. Teachers are evaluated in terms of tutorial tasks, teaching methodology, programming methods, cooperative techniques and coordinating skills. Therefore, it is very important for all the teachers to take different courses throughout the school year to improve their skills in these fields. Our school is a pioneer in the implementation of the cooperative methodology in all courses from pre-primary to secondary education. We believe in cooperative learning among equals. Students are arranged into groups of four or five, strategically chosen to compensate for the level of knowledge of the whole group. They are given different roles (coordinator, secretary, organizer and spokesperson) and must work together for the successful achievement of the tasks proposed by the teachers. Unlike individual learning, which can be competitive in nature, students learning cooperatively can capitalize on one another’s resources and skills (asking one another for information, evaluating one another’s ideas, monitoring one another’s work, etc.). Furthermore, the teacher’s role changes from giving information to facilitating students’ learning. Everyone succeeds when the group succeeds. The management of students’ social skills has highly improved regarding those such as leadership, decision-making, trust-building, friendship-development, communication and conflict resolution.

La Salle Sagrado Corazón has been involved in the Comenius Project E-Mag (2011-2013). In this project, students from Sweden, Czech Republic, Italy and Spain published articles and audiovisual material about different topics on the project’s website. The project language was English, but there was also a section for each country to publish on its own language. After the E-Mag project, we have applied for KA2 projects twice but with no success.

In 2011, we had the opportunity to improve our students’ French skills with an eTwinning project based on writing bilingual stories. Furthermore, in 2012 we carried out a linguistic exchange with students from Avignon, France. In 2013, we participated in an eTwinning project called Making Friends All over Europe, in which 11-13-year-old students from various European countries exchanged e-mails or audiovisual material to tell about themselves and their family, their town or village and region, their school and their lifestyles, hobbies, weekend and holiday activities. It was really gratifying to see students so enthusiastic about learning from other European equals how their life and hobbies is so similar being at the same time determined by each one´s own characteristics.

In 2015 and 2016, we had some vocational students doing their internship in Portugal, Italy and Britain by means of a KA1 project. This experience was very much appreciated among them as it provided real practical expertise and the possibility to learn the local language or practice the English language as a lingua franca. There is a great interest in the school to set up a bilingual education in all the stages, as pre-primary is the only one with the bilingual certification given by the Andalusian Council so far. We need specialized teachers with C1 level of English in order to implement it in primary, secondary and high-level. For this reason, many of our teachers study English to get the B1, B2 and C1 certificates. The school’s website is https://lasallemundonuevo.sallenet.org/ and is daily updated by the ICTT department led by its coordinator David Romero de Los Santos. They are in charge of disseminating all the schools´ activities on the website and social networks.

Activities and experience of the organization in relevant areas

La Salle Sagrado Corazón has participated in a Comenius and a KA1 Project. They have also experience in eTwinning projects, student exchanges and linguistic immersions. They are very concerned about the teaching and learning of foreign languages. Thus, many of the teachers are taking the B1, B2 and C1 English examinations which facilitate the intercultural communication among different countries.

The science department participate with innovative experiments in the Fair of Sciences held in Jerez every year. They provide a scientific point of view to the school life.

The ICT coordinator and supervisor will make sure to lead the project in a successful way with the active participation of computer vocational students.

María Elena Luna Galván, Spanish project coordinator, has previously coordinated a Comenius project. She will lead the project team and guide their work to achieve the goals. She manages eTwinning tools, has attended Erasmus+ seminars and has plenty of experience filling the applications, organising activities and helping to disseminate projects in the local media.

Our school is highly demanded by the students who belong to the neighbourhood as it offers qualified teaching and personalized assistant. The relationship between tutor teachers and families is very close, offering parents real solutions to the students´ problems such as absenteeism and lack of motivation.