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School 1 of the Amazon Guardian Schools Network

Everything started hereVila-seca, school year 2016-2017

Escola La Canaleta, in Vila-seca, is the first school in the network. Everything that came afterwards —the other eight schools, the letters, the video calls, the Amazon Guardian Schools Network (the AGSN) itself— comes out of what happened here.

It started with no network and no project. In 2016-2017, the year 3 pupils were working on climate change. From there came the idea of putting them in touch with a people who live inside the rainforest, and of speaking about the Amazon as somewhere real rather than somewhere far away.

On 4 May 2017, Puwê and Vari Puyanawa walked into the school. It was the very first exchange.

The school’s timeline

Three school years, two visits by Puwê and Vari, and the gathering the other schools came out of.

  1. 2016-2017 · year 3

    A project on climate change

    The year 3 pupils work on climate change and the Puyanawa people, with an exchange between pupils in Catalonia and in Brazil. It is the starting point of everything.

  2. 4 May 2017

    The first exchange of the network

    Puwê and Vari Puyanawa arrive. The two year 3 classes take part directly, fifty pupils. At the end of the visit the pupils themselves perform the play «L’Eruga de Colors» in front of the whole school: two classes each from years 1 to 6, two hundred pupils. The head teacher, the teaching team, a representative of the Catalan Department of Education and the education councillor of Vila-seca all attend. The leaders close the event with a traditional dance that everyone joins.

  3. 4 May 2017 · in the afternoon

    The talk for the families

    The same day, Puwê and Vari give the talk «El canvi climàtic i l’Amazònia» for the school families. The Diari de Tarragona and TV3’s InfoK both report on it.

  4. 16 May 2018

    They come back, and the school has a new generation

    Second visit by Puwê and Vari. This time the activities are with reception, with year 3 —the new guardians— and with year 4. TAC12 TV covers it. The same day there is a lecture at Institut Martí Franquès, organised by the Tarragonès teacher resource centre as part of its school libraries project, where the book is presented with its author and its illustrator.

  5. 22 June 2018 · year 4

    A film festival made by the children

    The school puts on a children’s ecological film festival. Fifty year 4 pupils shoot short and very short films with messages about ecology, to be watched online afterwards. On the day of the festival they plant a tree at the school.

  6. 27 May 2019

    The gathering at La Mora beach

    La Canaleta takes part, with 50 year 3 pupils, in the Guardian Schools gathering at La Mora beach, together with Guillem de Claramunt, La Vitxeta and Consol Ferré. It is the day the network stops being one school and becomes several.

What came out of this school

La Canaleta was the place where it became clear that the idea worked. Three things came out of here:

  • The teacher who took it to other schools — Àlex, a teacher at La Canaleta, went to tell the project to Escola La Vitxeta in Reus, which joined.
  • The lecture at the resource centre — the presentation at the Tarragonès teacher resource centre, in May 2018, is where Guillem de Claramunt, Consol Ferré, Col·legi Montserrat and the rest come from. That is where the AGSN is formally born.
  • The gathering at the beach — in May 2019, four schools together with Puwê and Vari: litter collected along the path, identifying the plants of the woods, dances, the handover of the letters between the Catalan schools and the Puyanawa one, and a 360° virtual reality experience to step into the village.

Nine years later the network continues, with schools that joined much later. The first letter left from here.

In the media and in the network

Amazon Guardian Schools Network

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