MAKING SPACE ON THE STREET: THE BOND AS AN EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY IN OPEN SETTINGS

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For years, I have worked as a street social educator, walking through squares, corners, benches, and parks. I have sat on curbs, listened to seemingly trivial conversations, and learned to read silences.

Working in open settings with adolescents means doing so in a space that isn’t yours — it’s like playing on the opposing team’s field. You don’t have the rules on your side, nor any authority assigned by the context. You are not a recognized institutional figure, nor are you backed by a formal space or infrastructure. You are someone who approaches them with an intention, but who is not immediately identified as necessary. And although that may seem like a disadvantage, it hides a great opportunity.

The educational bond in open settings is not taken for granted: it is built. And it is built slowly. Adolescents set the pace, test your place, observe you in silence, and often set limits. But when the connection appears — when the bond is established through freedom and mutual recognition — it becomes a transformative tool. Because in this scenario without formal hierarchies, the educator can only sustain themselves through relationship and presence.

Over time, I have come to understand that one of the most powerful foundations of this work is listening without judgment, listen openly. Not an easy task. It requires that we, as educators, analyze ourselves — recognizing our conditioned perspectives, our biases, the expectations we project, and the (often unconscious) tendency to want to correct, interpret, or classify. Listening without judgment is not merely an attitude; it is a demanding practice that requires giving up urgency, immediate response, and our need to be right. It is, ultimately, a commitment to unconditional presence and genuine availability toward the other.

Here emerges the value of recognition. In an open environment, where rules are often implicit and the educational space is not predefined, recognizing the other means welcoming them as they are, without conditions. As Mèlich¹ (2010) states, educating is not about shaping, but about “letting be,” sustaining the other’s existence without trying to redeem it.

This “letting be” is not passivity, but an active stance of listening, availability, and trust. It means being there without demanding anything in return, offering presence instead of haste, a gaze instead of directions. The bonds that are built on the street may take time to emerge because they require patience, consistency, and deep respect for the other’s rhythms. But when they finally do emerge, they rest on a solid foundation — one earned through mutual trust — and they often have greater strength and durability than in other educational contexts.

Education in open settings reminds us that you don’t need a classroom to educate, you don't need a title to be recognized. Above all, you need the willingness to build relational space where, apparently, there is none — to make space without invading, to listen without judging, and to look at the other, the adolescent, not as a project to be corrected but as legitimate human beings with their own meaning.

Finally, what would it look like to place relationships at the center, even in spaces traditionally dominated by procedures and structures? What opportunities might emerge if organizations embraced each person’s uniqueness as a richness rather than an exception? Is it possible to create deep bonds in environments where time and efficiency are the norm? 

Por PAU QUINTANA.

¹Mèlich, J. C. (2010). Filosofía de la finitud