CREATING ART

     

    Finally we decided to create our own piece of art!!!!

     Thankfully we have extraordinary students. Spencial reference should be made to Miguel Muñoz Alabarce student in IES La Rosaleda and in the conservatory of music in Málaga. He and the producer Luis Amador Goberna have created the song Free Spirits that talks about freedom and pride and breaking down stereotypes in a very optimistic way.

    We were so completely happy with the result that we decided to record it and Bahia Records was in charge of it. Students and teachers had a great time. 

    Not only the song fits perfectely with the project, but it is really good itself. Here you can check it and see if tou don't end the video singing the chorus.

    THANKS MIGUEL AND THANKS TO ALL THE STUDENTS AND TEACHERS FOR YOUR COMMITMENT!!!!

VISITING THE PICASSO MUSSEUM. BREAKING DOWN STEREOTYPES

      Picasso is considered one of the biggest artist of the 20th century. We all the women he loved and painted. However, because of the technic he used, it's not always easy to recognized these women as we supposed a women should looks like. This is the reason why we have chosen his work to think about gender stereotypes.

    Guided by the history teacher, a group of students visited the Picasso Museum that counts with a big amount of female portrayals. Students were located in front of a Picasso's sister portrait which was supposed to be "realistic". They inmediately identifyed it as a woman because it had red and dick lips, big  breasts, narrow eyebrows...all the elements that a woman is supposed to have. However, this wasn't a realistic work as Picasso's sister wasn't as old and she didn't really look like  the woman of the picture.

Later on, they watched a portrait of Dora Maar, the artist who was Picasso's girlfriend for several years. On this occassion students didn't recognized her as a woman at the first sight, because she wasn't represented as we have been taught. Nevertheless, when the museum instructor talked to them, when she started to ask question and to guide their experience in front of the portrait, students realized that the picture represented very well how Picasso saw his girlfriend, that the picture represented her inner personality much better than the other "realistic" one. In few words, sometimes a "realistic representation" means only a way of representing according the social rules. Our students learnnt that women can look very different, that there is not only a way to look like a woman, and this can be also said about any other person. 

 

    

CLOSURE OF THE FIRST EXCHANGE MEETING

    One of the last events before the farewell was a small tour around the school through historical LGTB personalities: writers, politicians, mathematicians hang on the walls and a brief biography was explained. This activity contributed in a modest way to fill the void in the academic curriculum concerning LGTB personalities. We are pefectly aware that there is still a lot to do, because LGTB students normally lack of references they can identify with, as if the only job for LGTB people were related to art, so we proposed this activity that could be also watched by any other member o person that visited our school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Finally, before saying goob-bye we raised the LGTB flag in our school. This flag repressents what we are workin on: Tolerance, respect, diversity. It's also our way to say to the students, teachers or any other member of our community that we are all very welcome. That we don't care who is cis- heterosexual, trans or whatever. Our business is only to educate future citizens to teach self-esteem and respect for others.

PLAYING WHILE LEARNING

     One of the remakable moments of this exchange occured when the students showed the games they had ellaborated and whose common topic was LGTB. Students created different games such as memory games, goose games or even a kind of trivial. The aim of this activity is to spread our knowledge while playing. For example, a memory game cards was made with the different flags and colors that represent the LGTB community.
     We think this kind of game are necessary at school for different reasons: First they contribute to fight against the ignorance, secondly they make visible the contribution of the LGTB community to our society and culture and finally they help to normalize any kind of gender identity or sexual election. Becuase schools normally suffer a kind of contradiction: On the one hand, we say that being lesbian, for example, is absolutely natural and nothing to be ashame of; but on the other hand students only see heterosexual model. Nor their books, neither their games reproduce any other kind of models, even not the language the teacher use, so our children have to grow up without references, feeling thenselves a kind of exception that is silently tolerated.

On the contrary, we do believe that it is more healthy to grow up with model, with references, feeling that their options are included and respected by all the community. Moreover, heterosexual students will grow up being respectful as their schools have shown them with respect any kind of option.

Here there are some examples, many of the games were physically produced, so we can share them with other nearby schools, our games were also digitally uploaded with common licence, so anyone who whish can use them (https://lgtbatschool.blogspot.com/2020/01/gamification.html)

A quiz game:

 

Students are divided into international groups and they are asked different questions about LGTB rights all over the world,such as where same gender marriage is allowed...Then they have to show in the map their option. Those who have more right answers are the winners. 

Here they are our students explaining their games: 

And here they are while playing:

Day Trip to Córdoba

     We wanted to take adventage of this exchange to show our partners a little bit more about our culture. In this sense we chose Córdoba because it represents an example of tolerance, as different cultures (Christian, Jewish and Islamic) lived there peacefully and this mixture contributed to its cultural development.
     Of course, it is a crime to visit this city without getting into la Mezquita. So this was our first stop.

 

But later on we had an appointment with "Personas"  where we joined a workshop on LGTB rights. There, while playing, we learnt about the legal framework all over the world students were able to do any kind of questions or to give and exchange their opinion in a safe enviroment.