When you work in special circumstances, in a difficult centre, there is always the question of whether you can do better. Exchanging experiences with other schools in our city does not help much either, because in general, they have fewer problems. Finding a similar school, with similar students (including the special education group) offers the opportunity to exchange experiences, to see how they work in the other school and to learn from their successes and even their mistakes. This was the idea with which the teachers went to visit the school and it was a great success.
IES Leonardo da Vinci is a singular centre, in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Alicante, which has the sixth lowest family income in Spain. In context with the area in which it is located, the school has more than 1800 students of 41 nationalities. The centre is unique and therefore has some aspects that are different from other more "common" centres. Among the special services of the centre is the educational guidance department which, in addition to the usual problems and newly arrived students who do not know the languages of the country, they take care of a group of students from 18 to 25 years old in special education, where they are explained basic aspects of life, such as shopping (and knowing how to pay), dressing themselves or, in general, trying to make these students independent persons. After an exhaustive research effort, we found a centre in France that has students with similar characteristics. The purpose of this project was to carry out a Job-Shadowing in that centre, in which two teachers from the guidance department went to see first-hand how they manage the day-to-day running of the guidance department and how they solve common problems in that centre.