How have schools in Spain responded to minoritys cultures and languages?

In Spain, in recent years, we are living important social changes. People from diferents nationalities and cultures are coming to our country. From 1999, the number of immigrants has increased by 6, and in this moment they are around 10% of the Spanish population. The educational system is trying meet this demand through diferentes measures.


The current education law in Spain, whose name is LOE (Law Organic of Education) planned to adapt the teaching to the studens who have any kind of special educational need, in order to guarantee their access, continuance and progression in the educational system. For this, the law establishes several measures related with the organization of the schools and the curriculum.

It is important note that this law is based on the idea of the inclusion in the educational treatment of the diversity. It goes beyond the idea of integration, which rejected the exclusion of students but developed different measures for their integration into the majority. The idea of inclusion is consistent with the principles of individualized education and treatment to each student according to their characteristics.

The measures that the current law provides can be clasificated in ordinary measures and extraordinary measures. Then I am going to explain briefly some of the most important measures.

Ordinary measures:

• Flexible grouping. This measure, very used in Spain in last years, aims to put students into groups that foster a better environment to improve theirs achievement.
  


• Optional subjects, that allows to the students set their curriculum according to their interests, abilities and needs.
  


• Programs to strengthen basic skills.

Extraordinary measures:

-To stay one more year in the same academic course. (This measure have very specific requirements).

-Diversified curriculum. For students in last years of the obligatory education, who have important dificulties to stay in the regular course. It consists of a reorganization of the content and the use of methodologies based on practical activities that enable students to achieve the overall objectives and core competencies of educational stage.

-Initial Professional Qualification Programs (PCPI), for students with poor motivation to continue their education, with a low level of curricular competence and interest in acquiring training that enables them to enter the world of work.

-Curricular adaptation. When we talk about curriculum adaptation refers to adjustment or modification of the educational curriculum that is needed to enable students to access, stay or promotion within the education system. Starting from a different reality in which every student is different from others and has a particular educational needs, educational action must changes the curriculum or its access ways, so that students can participate and achieve, the best they can, the basic objectives of the stage.

In this way, we can find different kinds of curricular adaptation according to their aim: acting on access to the curriculum or the curriculum itself, and depending on their significance level. Finally, it is important notes that my country is composed of seventeen autonomous communities, where state law does not determine completely what to do in each place, but it leaves certain freedom in the curriculum that is realized in each community, each class and student. This is known as open or semi-open curriculum.

In the Autonomous Community of Madrid in where I live, you can find various measures that attempt to respond to the diversity of students. It´s important the measure known as "link-classroom" where students who do not speak Spanish stay a time, about 6 months, in which the main objective is to learn this language. However, the most part of immigrants students is coming from Latin American and their native language is Spanish, so that measures of attention to diversity do not stay in teaching language, but far beyond.

Maybe in EWU

Some things that the people want to do in their life are to write a book, to have children, to plant a tree, or perhaps to travel around the world. But in somes cases the people wants speak other languages. I am into this kind of people. It can look a stupid thing because a lot of people speaks two, three, four or more languages, but when you study a language and you don´t get speak it, it becomes an important challenge.

I feel that I am lucky. In this moment, I am in a place to 8,548 km / 5,311 miles from my home in Madrid. I am in Cheney, a little, quiet and friendly village near to Spokane, Washington State, USA. I have the oportunity to improve my English.

My group and me arrived here last saturday and we are doing a lot of things together. But I haven´t said that the reason of my trip is for study. I am in Eastern Washington University for five weeks. We are studing many things about the educational systems of USA and from diferents educational systems from Europe, because in my group you can find people from France, Germany, England and Scotland.

After this, I can explain the two dimensions of my learning of English as the criteria that Professor Petrie has taught us.
First, I am developing one kind of habilities related with social interactions. Altought we are in classroom 9 hours a day, the rest of the time we are speaking English about several topics. It was experts such as Jim Cummins called Basic Interpersonal Communitation Skills (BICS). It does not require a efford cognitive but is important to several things. It is important to integrate in a group, to feel that you are able to ask a coffee or ask address of a place. It is necessary to not feel alone in a country that is very diferent from yours.

By other hand, I am acquiring important skills for my academic instruction. They are called Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) , and I can acquire them in the class that we have everyday. The principal diferent with the others one is that in this case is not enought understand what the profesor is saying. Besides this you must elaborate the information and to do something with it.

I am sorry that this blog looks like a diary, but my experience in learning English is happening now, in this moment, everyday here.