Colegio Vital Alsar (Vital Alsar school) was born from a movement called “A Volar,” we were in that collective before forming Colegio Vital Alsar. In “A Volar” we reflected upon education and had 3 central tasks: one was pedagogical reflection, to think about the principles that sustain us and are shared among us all; another was thinking about our relationship school administration, how we can develop it in a public space and make it effective; and another was raising awareness, how we can bring awareness to more people so they can join us. (…) Our pedagogical focus defends children’s ability to be critical, reflective, have the ability to make decisions, and rethink what they want to do. We want children to be agents of change and in order to be an agent for change you need to learn how to be yourself. For that to be possible, you have to create a space where children can choose what they are. So it has to do with getting the best out of them. That is usually not offered within public education, which is still very traditional. This raises the question, where is the space where children can wholly develop into human beings? Where is the space where events, whether in the news or in your life, can be analyzed in order to view them from a critical perspective? Where is the space where we can be together in solidarity, and develop children’s capacity for empathy and their ability to learn to think? When we started developing the core characteristics of our pedagogy we tried to make sure all values of the Colegio Vital Alsar are reflected in them.
