Breaking the walls between school and society: Angelos Patsias at TEDxThessaloniki

My name is Angelos Patsias, and I've been a teacher for four years now, the last two years, I've worked in a mountainous Cretan village called Fourfouras. Fourfouras is a small village, mountainous, at 450 meters, as Popi very well mentioned earlier it is mountainous at the foothills of Psiloritis, 45 kilometers from Rethymno and they appointed me there, indeed. I still remember the first time I took the car casual, unsuspecting, I could say, almost touristic. I drove from Rethymno, and I thought I would get there at some point. I went up on a mountain, then I came down a mountain, and I thought "here we are." Well we weren't. We went up one more mountain, and then came down one more mountain. We stopped twice for some goats to cross the road, and we got lost once! Moreover, the only instructions I had was, "Wherever you see a crossroad, you turn left." This fits with another comment, let me tell you. As you may already know, it fits the local political beliefs. When I first shown the geophysical map in the classroom, I said, "Children, what is this green area on the map?" And Roula jumps up -- a fascinating creature -- and says, "It is PASOK, sir!" (Laughter) There we are then. Well done. It is then PASOK. So, after 45minutes, I reached Fourfouras. Now that I am talking to you, it already feels like home. But in order to grasp the situation, when we talk about Fourfouras, we mean all seven villages that use our primary school. We are actually talking about a separate island in the hinterland of Crete. There are mountainous villages, isolated -- herders, farmers mainly. They are distant from the benefits of tourism, distant from the benefits of subsidies -- which are popular there. Basically they give their own struggle to cope with society nowadays. And indeed they keep a strong element of tradition inside them. It is very typical. Now, for a child in Fourfouras and in any other Fourfouras, nothing is concrete. English, piano lessons, ballet, cinemas, theaters, and the commodities that a city kid can easily have, they are not certain to them. On the contrary, a child there must run to catch up with developments. This child has to travel long distances to catch up with developments. Like we need to travel long distances to reach our primary school. It takes 20 minutes for a lot of children to come to school. Now, the school, a provincial school, like this, in Fourfouras. Teachers there are mainly passersby. Because it is a remote and difficult school they pass by for a year or two, the most. Even if they have the desire to create on this, unfortunately there is insufficient time. Last year I had a conversation with a local mother, I will translate directly from the local idiom. She said: "Angelos, what is this job promotion teachers take and they leave this school?" Because you know, schools don't open on time, this is not certain, nor is it certain that all the teachers will be on time, at the beginning of the school year. So now you may think that for us teachers, a job promotion is a very good thing, like finding the right bride. From a difficult place, we go to an easy place. But for the village, the land itself, it was something somewhat offensive. I mean they felt bad about it. Nevertheless, we ended up there, out of luck. Last year, three people, 25 to 27 years old. This year there are four of us, but age range is the same. (Laughter) With common goals, shared visions, common dreams, we wanted to build something good. John is from there, so he had one more good reason, he wanted to offer something to his homeland. This is how we started. We kept Ken Robinson's words in our minds. Ken Robinson is something like the Justin Bieber of teachers. Every teacher has his picture under the pillow, etc. "Good night Ken" they say and they kiss it. In a previous TEDTalk, Ken said: "The teacher must prepare children to become citizens of 2040". I am not sure these were his words, maybe he said something about pension in 2060. Nice Ken, now, how do we do that? Truth is, we have expanded the capabilities of the curriculum, as much as possible. We added photography lessons, robotics, theater, and all that with no experts. Just with what we already knew. We remodeled the classrooms with things we had in our homes. In fact we built a classroom for artistic expression, and it is painted exactly like my living room. I literally feel at home. Generally we tried to respect the fact that the school was in a mountainous place, in a rural society. So we moved many of the lessons outdoors. There was a period when we sent children at home covered with mud, not a pleasant site. Parent were ready to -- oh let's forget about it. Our goal was to build a self-managed school. A school with respect to the child, a school where the child will enter, and will express and develop its personality, and will not feel isolated, or alone. And right there, in the middle of these dreams, came the financial crisis. And this is where the poet says, "My dreams, like the petals of an anemone you scattered as if you were the winter." So then came the financial crisis. Development subsided. Too much heartache in the industry. But to us the financial crisis was very exculpatory. It was too ugly to feel that your employer does not respect you. He puts you to nurture something so important, and at the same time he doesn't respect you. Fourfouras like the Gaulish Village, resisted to this crisis of values. Not just one man, I shouldn't be standing here right now, there should be many more up here. It just so happened. The village, the parents, the municipality, different people from all over Greece, who really stood against this crisis of values and helped us built a better school. I deeply thank them for that, it was a very significant lesson. Now, if someone visited our school, what will one see? One will see orchards for each class, and fruit trees, one will see a herb garden and a greenhouse, and all that with the purpose for the school to be able to feed the students. I wish this will happen. I don't know if it will, but we certainly hope so. One will not see any hens. Unfortunately. A chicken coop was indeed a dream they deprived from me, but we will make it. Let me tell you the story of the chicken coop. (Applause) I wake up in cold sweat -- just kidding (Laughter). I am sorry, I will say things like that now, because I am very nervous and my mouth has dried out a little. I thought we should can the village mayor, Manolis. So we called Manolis. - Hello Manolis. - Hello Angelos. How are you? - I am fine Manolis. - I wanted to ask you something. - Tell me please Angelos. - I want to build a chicken coop. Silence. - Angelos, I can't hear you, the reception is bad, what did you say again? - I am saying we should build a chicken coop. - Oh Mother of Christ, the guy is crazy! - I am coming over, I am coming over! Well really like Flash Gordon he came to school instantly. He entered and didn't even look at me. He went straight to John up front, who is from the village: - John, what is wrong with the teacher? Are you crazy teacher? What are you talking about chicken coops? - Nice little chicken Manolis. Should be nice! - Oh Mother of God. I don't dare say this at the village. They will write limericks on us. Limericks for Fourfourians, is like the sky falling on their heads. If you write a limerick for them, it's like you take their soul. So you are not going to see any chicken. Next year though I would like that. Really. We will see. You will also meet a lot of different people being at the school, if you come at a random day. You can meet soap makers, farmers, breeders, captains. You can meet the head of the archaeological museum, which essentially makes the museum come to life, 45 kilometers from its walls. And all that, simply because what we want most of all, is to build an open school. A school that will shape and will be shaped, by the society. The walls must fall at some point. We kept children indoors for long enough. It is time to take them out. This is a very good lesson for both grown-ups and children. (Applause) Within this framework, we built a network in collaboration with other mountainous schools in Rethymno prefecture and the rest of Greece. The school network of Oreon (beautiful). Besides, you can see this. (Laughter) It is written with omicron. Mountainous school are now connected. They have a common code, they associate. We built a rural school partnership, where people sell their products, and help in their society's common meals. They communicate between them and exchange opinions but most of all we should demolish the wall around border villages at some point. because everything is fine and dandy, but parents and grand parents, in Crete at least, that I know of, have built walls around their villages and do not know collaboration. So through this, essentially a code is created. We imagine that in the long run, their children will learn to collaborate at some degree. We hope this will succeed. I don't know, but I want it to. I left Fourfouras TV for the end. Fourfouras TV is a network television. Children assume the role of the reporter. They stand in front of the camera and analyze physics, children's questions, things they have done in general. They like this very much. The show is "The little Amariotians." When we first said to the people in charge, they turned us down. "No, you will not expose the children!" We exposed them and it was a very good thing. It is not that knowledge was communicated in a playful way. That was not the best part. The best part was that a child's voice, whom is in an isolated village trapped within the mountains, now this child has a voice. Now this child knows, that another child from Rethymno, knows about it. That another child in Rethymno learns, does it's lesson, according to what it said. After the publicity that was given to the school, - like it or not - other children in the rest of Greece can see a small child from Fourfouras, and learn from it. I believe this is the most important thing to accomplish with this activity. We did not expect this. It did not start like this. I would like to present you now a greeting prepared by the kids. Unfortunately, not all of them were in the class when we filmed this, so please enjoy them! VIDEO: Greetings from magical and exotic Fourfouras. How are you? We are the Little Amariotians and we welcome you from Fourfouras TV Hello. We are the Little Amariotians! Nectarios, the Ninja Niki, the hacker Alex the shy Johanna the sleepyhead Mary the poet Rozina the reader Alexander the Great Pantelis the goal keeper Anthony the dark-jackal Alexandra the dancing queen Good morning Thessaloniki with your White Tower! Unfortunately we couldn't come to your beautiful company. - Would you like that? - Yes, indeed! - Our teacher is not taking us with him. - Bad teacher. But we have found a way. We are tiny people, we will get into his suitcase. - Smart ***. Alexandra what are you doing? (Laughter) - Tell me Johanna, can I ask you something? - Yes. - How do we say in Cretan, "What are you saying"? - Inta mu les? And how can we say the same in Cretan-Thessalonian? - Inta meh les? Well done! (Laughter) Smile one - two - three point four. Now let's go with the new five star smile! Lots of kisses from Fourfouras! Thank you. Let me say before I end my talk, that I didn't come here as the super teacher whatsoever I am far from this role. On the contrary we try really hard to learn to stand in the classroom, we try hard to learn what we should teach the children, if we are doing it right, etc. There are a lot better than us. I just came here to tell you a story about what happens when some people coordinate and love deeply what they do, even in times that not everything is rosy, and how they can achieve something. I would like to end my talk with a very favorite quote from Kazantzakis, "It is my duty, and mine alone, to save the world. If it is not saved, then I alone am to blame." So thank you very much, be well. (Applause)