BEGOÑAZPI IKASTOLA

Values

Begoñazpi Ikastola proposes that all its members become aware of two basic choices in their students' education: we want an extensive education on value systems and to be able to teach within social solidarity.

1. A person's complete development.

We consider that the basic objective to our educational action has to be that of the shaping of human beings. When we speak about complete development, we would like to state that each student should know and develop all his/her abilities in a balanced way. This is why the following abilities will be dealt with at the Ikastola:

• a) Cognitive:
• Making the student be capable of being interested in investigating all the natural and social reality of his/her surroundings.
• Allowing him/her to have access to critical and rigorous knowledge of the aforesaid.
• Fostering not only the know how but also enjoyment, as it is by means of significant knowledge that a student is able to find and make sense of what he/ she is learning.
• Preparing him/her for a technological and functional world in which he/she be able to perform efficiently and guided manner.
• b) Emotional:
• Help him/her be sensitive towards those realities in his/her physical and social surroundings.
• Fostering the times at which one feels good and is open to pleasure, oriented towards immediate personal pleasure of the desire to share and be part of a community.
• Fostering the joyful and responsible ownership of sexuality.
• Educating one's movements and his/her control as a source and an engine of one's feeling and of collaboration.
• c) Expressive:
• Fostering the times to carry out and perfect different varieties of communication.
• Allowing one to relish in the silence which boosts the most absolute communication.
• Teaching in the most practical way that creative initiative sticks with technique.
• Placing communicative means and systems at the service of decision making processes and at the service of interpersonal encounters.
• d) Social:
• Providing occasions for self-awareness with the objective of acquiring a positive and realistic outlook of oneself.
• Creating situations in which the student becomes aware and exercises his/her autonomy which is adapted to his/her development and moderated by his/her social relationships.
• Creating situations in which each individual feels needed and efficient within group relations.
• Getting the student used to savouring cooperation and solidarity.

From a Christian perspective of the development of a human being, we will educate, in addition, we will also educate in the following abilities which we can call:


• e) Transcendental:
• Getting students used to referring to objective values which transcend individualistic and pragmatic outlooks.
• Providing occasions so they can commit themselves to noble and altruist causes.
• Fostering the awareness of being called to the freedom of the children of God.
• Providing opportunities so students can elaborate progressive and adequate synthesis between faith and culture for their ages.

2. Educate within social solidarity.

Begoñazpi Ikastola would like to make its explicit intention to educate within itself in social solidarity and to do so it proposes diverse objectives. Yet this education has no sense without an obvious commitment of other social extracurricular groups such as families and other social institutions. To do so,

a) The Ikastola

Tries to foster a sense of belonging to a true Educational Community. We would like to gather the following from this Educational Project as the main factors among others which contribute to this basis sense of belonging:

1. 1. The internal regime regulations are to be clear and accepted by everyone.
2. 2. The teachers' school organization as well as that of students' and parents' will be fostered so everyone gets used to taking part in our Educational Community.
3. 3. Group work and its coordination will be fostered not only among teachers but among students as well.
4. 4. A clear option for coeducation is made. This is understood as equal education between the sexes.
5. 5. We choose to reward the necessary effort to be able to overcome inequality among students. The Ikastola wishes to collaborate with social changes by dealing with them in a special way, with those who encounter problems in any given stage of their development as a human being.

b) The teaching staff at the Ikastola

The teachers are the key driving force of the Educational Project, therefore:

1. 1. Their work must be acknowledged and stimulated by all the stratum of the Ikastola.
2. 2. We will highlight some of the roles of the teaching staff in order for the Educational Project to work well: the teachers must be their students' advisors, thereby dealing with their diversity. Furthermore, they must be creative and efficient mediators of their students' learning. Lastly, they need to work together, as a whole.

c) Families

Begoñazpi Ikastola aknowledges the fact that our educational action is an extension of what has already been started within the families. This is why we feel the need to intensify the collaboration between both parties with the objective of coordinating better actions which direct us towards common aims.

In this sense:

1. 1. We make the following public: our Educational Project, the result of consultations regarding all educational stratum, and we propose it as the framework of a joint venture.
2. 2. We would like to highlight the need to closely partake in the achievement of foreseeable educational objectives.
3. 3. We request that each and every family examine the School's Educational Objectives and that they try to give them continuity and coherence in their family life.
4. 4. We feel that cultural and social differences are a positive aspect since they can enrich one's social fabric. Yet given some unfair differences, this Educational Project tries to highlight solidarity aspects with those who need it the most.

d) Euskal Herria

We are convinced that each person acquires dignity and develops it as he/she knows how to distinguish his/her roots, his/her own identity - in this case sociocultural - he/she knows how to appreciate it and he/she is committed to developing it. This is why an awareness of the sociopolitical environment of Euskalherria and of the Sovereignty of Biscay are a key objective of our Educational Project.

This means:

1. 1. Getting to know the realities which make up our surrounding in a rigorous and reflexive way.
2. 2. Actively raise awareness regarding Euskadi's cultural and social characteristics and love them as one's own.
3. 3. Become actively aware of some of the risks which fundamental Basque cultural values are facing, above all its language, and equip students with the means to overcome them.
4. 4. Open Euskalherria's horizons towards equal and fair collaboration with other peoples.
5. 5. Putting tolerance and respect into practice by starting with having an appreciation of everything which is ours.
6. 6. Become actively aware of social injustices and put attitudes of solidarity into practice.

e) Ecclesiastical Community

The condition of being a Diocese Educational Institution means:

1. 1. That those who work in this Educational Project acknowledge that it is in exquisite work where Christian faith is present and authenticates itself.
2. 2. That the reference to Jesus of Nazaret, his being and his doctrine must be a stimulus for commitments in community coexistence and for values of solidarity.
3. 3. We would like our students to develop their abilities in other fields of knowledge while they also mature their religious knowledge and experiences in harmony.
4. 4. Due to this, the Ikastola will also provide pastoral guidance which allows those students who are believers to express their faith and foster their becoming members of their Christian communities.
5. 5. Special attention will be placed in overcoming educational marginalization from that of a religious one, therefore allowing by means of interdisciplinary work, the comprehension of what a ferment of the best human values is.