Teachers' return to classrooms, still without students: "We're not stopping."

PalmBy the time students in Balearic schools arrive in their classrooms on September 10, teachers will have spent more than a week preparing their lessons to have everything ready. The buildings have been closed for two months, and now they have to clean and organize infrastructure that has suffered the passage of time. There are also centers that have been summer schools and that, come September, must reorganize for academic activities.

"We don't stop," explains Miquel Bujosa, director of CEIP Es Puig de Lloseta. In the case of his center, they have six days to fine-tune the coordination between teachers, levels, and cycles, and redefine the new teaching structures, in accordance with the changes introduced by the Regional Ministry with the new curricula, as well as the mobile phone ban and screen limitationsIt's also time to define outings, reserve dates, finalize camps, and form working committees: for coexistence, linguistics, celebrations, etc.

One of the first things to do is a meeting to discuss changes in the school staff. It's necessary to integrate and build a team, because cooperation between teachers is constant throughout the school year. "It's necessary to explain how the school works. From there, each tutor is responsible for setting up their classroom and preparing all the materials," explains Bujosa. At CEIP Es Puig, teachers meet by level to plan shared activities. During this first week, the schools also exchange information between the outgoing and incoming tutors to better understand each child's needs and strengths.

A new project

Raul Abril is a teacher at the Melchor Rosselló y Simonet Primary School (Santa Maria del Camí) and, aside from his usual duties, he has a new job this year. The Ministry of Education has granted the school participation in a language immersion project. "We're supposed to leave in October [they're going to another country], but we just found out now, and all we have to do is select the 20-25 students who will participate, inform the families, make arrangements with travel agencies to buy tickets, etc. There are a lot of small, invisible jobs," he summarizes.

"Some people say we have a lot of vacation time, but we're back at 100% capacity starting September 1st, loaded with meetings because our days are numbered and we have to meet with each other, with the families for interviews, deal with bureaucracy, and get up to date on the changes the gang has introduced at the Sa Graduada Primary School (Manacor).