Quatre Camins Method
Educational Objectives
Our educational objectives go beyond the classroom. We nurture reflective, critical, and creative individuals who value diversity and act with responsibility, care, and empathy in society. We focus on developing both personal and collective skills. We promote autonomy, responsibility, collaboration, and a genuine commitment to learning. Our students gain knowledge while also learning how to learn and develop a deep respect for themselves, for others, and for the planet. At Quatre Camins, we create a space where they find their voice and learn to use it to discover their place in the world, generating a positive impact on society.
Our teaching method is designed to help students acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills required by law. The curriculum is the backbone of our educational approach.
Learning is free from external judgment. Our educational proposals include fun elements to make them more engaging. Mistakes are not punished — they are part of learning. The process matters as much as or more than the result.
Our students strive to improve themselves each day, without rivalry. Growth is guided by internal connection, not external comparison. A group is a source of inspiration and a model — not a competition.
We equip children with tools to experience all emotions in a healthy way. Emotional management is essential for learning, coexistence, and health. Students learn to manage their emotions with support from our team.
We create respectful, loving, and caring environments that support human growth without pre-set expectations. We respect each child’s uniqueness and individuality, without judgment — with attention, observation, and responsibility.
The school follows the Plurilingual and Intercultural Education Program, with Valencian being the main language of instruction. We ensure sufficient presence of Spanish and English to foster balanced multilingual learning. We promote a positive bond with languages, encouraging future acquisition of new ones. We aim for the highest degree of trilingualism in our students. In early stages, language learning is natural — based on observation, imitation, and practice. We emphasize creating everyday situations in other languages. In later stages, we add grammatical instruction to this foundation.
Identity signs
Learning is more effective when students actively participate. We use Cody Blair’s Learning Pyramid. Our methods are practical, varied, and dynamic. We consider how our brain works to bring this knowledge into the classroom on a daily basis.
Emotional validation gaze. The teaching team shows genuine interest in the students.
Commitment to care from the entire school team. We seek balance in the relationships of everyone who is part of the school.
Conflict management is based on constructive dialogue and mediation. We prioritize mutual understanding and collaborative solution-seeking, teaching students to resolve disagreements respectfully and effectively. We cultivate life skills that allow students to navigate conflicts autonomously and constructively. Our approach is based on Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication, Carl Rogers’ active listening and restorative circles.
We do not solve students’ problems for them; we provide the tools for them to find their own solutions. Autonomy does not mean leaving them alone; it means accompanying them in the process without anticipating their needs.
Aware of our role in caring for the planet, Quatre Camins integrates ecology into its curriculum and daily practices, creating healthy spaces and promoting active environmental awareness among our students.
How is learning done at 4C?
Teacher-led proposals according to the curriculum and responding to students’ needs and rhythms. These are daily proposals with specific objectives and content adapted to each cycle.
Math workshop, language, STEAM, theater, art, English, cooking, psychomotricity, social studies, free dance…
We promote knowledge and student independence in safe environments. Our classrooms are equipped with extensive and varied materials to meet the needs of each stage. Students access the materials themselves, investigating and seeking support when needed.
Encourages motivation, creativity, and learning construction through direct experience. Students can move through different areas according to their interests and learning needs. This keeps the learning impulse alive at that moment. These moments go beyond content, involving relationships and experience.
Sessions where our team individually addresses difficulties or gaps in specific learning. These sessions provide extra reinforcement beyond daily workshops.
We believe school must go out into life, and life must enter the school. We facilitate visits from external people who bring their reality and knowledge to our centre. We go out to explore and deepen our environment. We foster curiosity and knowledge through experience.
Our passionate teaching team spreads this passion. They design, adapt, and modify spaces and workshops necessary for learning.
Emotional well-being directly impacts classroom climate and students’ learning capacity. We promote emotions that support learning, such as calmness and tranquility, and work to reduce those that hinder it, such as stress and competitiveness.
The relationship between the teaching team and students is one of respect, love, care, and connection. We foster secure attachment.
The school has natural outdoor spaces with centuries-old trees where students play, discover, climb, and experiment.
Evaluation
Evaluation is continuous, holistic, and formative. Evaluation reports are personalised and unique. For assessing the degree of acquisition of specific competencies, we consider: For assessing the degree of acquisition of specific competencies, we consider:
Thanks to our small ratios, we can observe and evaluate the learning, developmental, and emotional processes daily. Experiential learning situations are presented in the classroom, through which we observe the student’s learning moment.
The teaching team respects the student’s pace while observing, reflecting, and questioning what they see to detect any developmental or maturational mismatches. If so, families are informed to design an appropriate approach for each case.
Each group has weekly hours dedicated to individual sessions for accompaniment and personal observation. These sessions are proposed by teachers and are sometimes done in pairs.
There is a commitment to review and supervise the teaching staff to avoid projecting our experiences onto the children. To clear our perspective and keep it neutral. Our commitment is to provide ongoing training to evolve and provide responses to daily challenges.
We maintain regular communication with families through various channels. We hold at least one individual meeting per school year with families.
To assess if there are any learning difficulties, we work jointly with external professionals who advise us in supporting students with specific educational needs. Teachers detect learning difficulties, inform families, and refer students to specific professionals (psychologists, speech therapists, physiotherapists, behavioral optometrists…).
Pedagogical bases and references
A person is shaped by their interaction between the environment and genetic predisposition, building themselves day by day. Instead of focusing on memorising content, the goal is to develop mental structures, understand autonomously, and cultivate creativity. Learning seeks understanding, autonomy of thought, and cognitive skills based on knowledge that emerges without external order but with internal order.
Edward de Bono (1967) invented this term, characterised by producing ideas outside habitual thought patterns, without a chain of ideas aimed only at a known result. It is a creative process that generates something new, allowing more creative and innovative ideas to solve known problems.
These Northern Italian schools inspire us, as they are places of coexistence and relational exchange between adults and children. A place where thinking, discussion, and work try to reconcile what is known with what is unknown, difficulties, errors, expectations, successes, doubts, and choice problems. A different way of working.
Dr. Montessori’s scientific approach and belief in external order as a link to internal order inspire Quatre Camins, as well as the importance of some of her materials for developing mental skills. She also contributes significantly to describing “sensitive periods”—times of strong impulses guiding children to choose specific activities essential for progress. “Sensitive periods” exist for order, language, movement, and sensory refinement.
We are inspired by their vision of autonomy: the ability of children to explore and regulate their movements in a safe environment. Our students have access to materials and spaces that encourage freedom of exploration, coordination and concentration. Our teaching assistants observe respectfully to support initiative and conflict resolution. This approach also strengthens emotional and social autonomy, promoting confidence and collaboration. Our goal is for each child to discover their motor skills and gain self-esteem through free play.
According to his perspective, autonomy of movement arises from symbolic play and exploration of one’s own body to discover its limits and possibilities. Our school offers open spaces and materials that encourage movement, imagination and communication through play.
Investigating is inherent to human beings and follows a natural process. In this way, we learn concepts, facts, procedures, attitudes and values that are fundamental to adapting and living in our environment. Children investigate from the very beginning of their lives. We defend and promote this spirit of inquiry, encouraging autonomy in self-learning.
We are teachers who review our practice to solve real problems, reflecting and theorising in order to redirect the curriculum when necessary. We start from theories that guide our work as conscious social practice, understood in its context and in dialogue with the reality of the environment. We observe, analyse and distinguish in order to generate new knowledge and advance in the design-action-evaluation cycle.
Systemic pedagogy in the classroom allows us to understand the interactions between students, teachers and the environment in order to strengthen learning and supportive relationships. We design interventions that foster group cohesion, shared responsibility, and circular communication among all educational actors. We promote reflective and collaborative practices to review our patterns, roles, and boundaries, adjusting strategies according to emerging needs. We evaluate not only content, but also learning and coexistence processes, promoting support systems and continuous adaptation of the curriculum.
- Rebeca and Mauricio Wild. Our methodology values freedom, limits, responsibility, and interest in understanding spontaneous childhood activities.
- Ojo de Agua, educational environment with respect between adults and children as a basic principle of relationships, and with trust in the learning capacity of girls and boys.
- Aletha Solter with contributions on types of conflicts, accompanying crying, the therapeutic role of play, and her proposal for democratic education.
- Carl Rogers with active listening and student-centred education.
- Gestalt therapy emphasising vulnerability, attending to the present field.
- Marshall Rosenberg‘s nonviolent communication.
- The proposal of substantive sexuality where the human being is a sexual being developing as such, fostering an environment for this development.
- Creative Education by Arno Stern with contributions on attendance and non-judgment toward artistic expression.
