The visit started in BBK Trends Forum, a worldwide event in Bilbao where Peter was invited to share his experience in teaching futures and to talk about our organisation. He could also talk to students, educators and managers of schools about our aim, and with the help of some members of the HUB in Spain, he created new bonds with people from the team of C4E and BBK, who were really interested in joining the TTF community and creating educational projects in the future.
After a couple of days in Bilbao, Peter flew to Barcelona and prepared for two intense days of work, visiting two schools in Barcelona and empowering students and teachers to include teaching futures in the curriculum. It was the first time that the spanish HUB team -almost complete- met together, and we have to say: it was GREAT to work with Peter! Not only did we learn a lot, but we enjoyed preparing the materials, the classes and the after work!
ST PETER'S SCHOOL
The visit of the first day was at St Peter's school and we really appreciate their welcome and the organisation to develop the presentation and the futures thinking workshop.
St Peters educational project is built on three fundamental pillars: critical thinking, exponential science and developing a culture of change makers. It is an international school that has jumped with passion into the futures thinking.
Peter Bishop made an introduction to futures thinking and explained that future thinking skills help students learn how to “live with uncertainty, and empowers them to be the leaders of the future” .
We enjoyed the conversation with teachers and managers of the school and we also learnt that they have been designing learning experiences and future training programs for other teachers. They're starting to introduce futures in subjects such as English, Exponential Technologies, History or even Maths.
Some of the teachers and managers have started to prepare themselves in this methodology and they have a culture favourable to innovation which makes their implementation easier.
Noelle Roces, who is leading the project, is really committed to including futures thinking in their program for students Y6 to Y10. She is planning to create an open showcase of their future program. It will be visualised as a “Future Museum” with the artefacts created by children’s imagination.
We are looking forward to helping in the process of making real teach the future at St Peters!
LEARNLIFE SCHOOL
The second day in Barcelona, we visited a very disruptive school, without titles and exams. Learnlife is focus on self-determined, purpose-inspired and personal learning.
In the morning we enjoyed a workshop with the group of change makers (Y11-Y12). We explored with the students the different futures and worked with current signals of change and their classification into STEEP categories.
We were surprised by their creativity, work and their reflections in relation to expected, alternatives and preferred futures. The topics that came from the exercise were climate change, the impact of technology on our lives, religion and even politics and its impact on society. A great team of futures thinkers!
We will certainly see some progress at these schools and we will be happy to share them with our Teach the Future community!