Cristina Gutiérrez, the Co-Director of La Granja (The Farm), a farm school located in Santa Maria de Palautordera in the foothills of Montseny Massif, was the speaker at the second Edu_aldia lecture held on Wednesday, 18 March 2015. Gutiérrez talked about how the school teaches children to discover emotions they are unaware of.
At the Farm, they work on emotional education. “We teach the children to recognize their emotions and learn to manage them”, said Gutiérrez. “We raise their awareness about things they're unaware of”.
She said that through games, activities and the natural surroundings, the teachers at the Farm “help the children discover feelings they've never called by name”. “Julia, a six-year-old, told me, ‘Even the forest makes music’. How is it that children of that age aren't familiar with silence?”
As Gutiérrez explained in this second session of Edu_aldia, the principles of the farm school can be summed up in two verbs: look and see, i.e. “see what's around you and interpret it. That’s basic for us at the Farm. The idea is not to judge, because making judgements is the enemy. Children are immediately aware whether they’re being judged or not”.
The Farm has been educating children using the emotional education method for ten years. And it works. As Cristina Gutiérrez explained while she showed a photo of boys and girls playing together, “That's what emotional education means to us. It's a powerful tool for teaching children”.
