Our Story

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What Does Every Parent Want?

Every parent wants one simple thing for their child: a school where they feel safe, supported, and truly inspired to succeed.

 

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The Current Education System is Broken

When American entrepreneur and Harvard Law graduate Akida Mashaka (above left) looked for a school in Barcelona for his own teenage son, he hit a wall.  He found a broken system.  On one side were rigid, traditional schools teaching a 200-year-old industrial-age curriculum that forced children to memorize facts rather than think independently.  On the other side were alternative schools with no academic structure.  There was no middle ground.  There was no school where a child's unique "superpower" was intentionally discovered as a path for their future success.  There was no school balancing high academic standards with genuine social and emotional well-being.

 

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Born From a Father’s Frustration

Frustrated by a legacy education system designed to build cogs for a machine rather than leaders for the real world, Akida decided to fix it himself.

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Even without an educational background, Akida took the fearless leap and opened Barcelona High School (BHS) for his son and 4 other teenage students, in a windowless basement to just start and see what he could immediately learn from the students and families based on their needs and issues.  What Akida did was apply his unique learning methodology as an entrepreneur to how kids should learn in education.  It started with Akida introducing a culture where failure wasn't punished, but treated as the ultimate data point for growth and future success.

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As Akida began to see a pattern that caused students to suffer, the turning point came when Akida partnered with Co-Founder, Amanda Slefo (above right), an award-winning educator from Chicago, who shared his vision that modern schooling could be fixed.  Together, as the ultimate team, they combined Akida’s methodical learning approach in entrepreneurship with Amanda’s academic knowledge and leadership to build an educational framework entirely new.

 

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New Educational Framework

To solve the problem for those original five students, and many more over those initial years, Akida and Amanda developed a proprietary, dual-layered framework designed to help students thrive in this new rapidly changing world:

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1. The Social Wellness School™ Model

A social and emotional learning system where academic excellence is driven by social engagement and emotional health. 

 

2. The BHS Method™ (Build. Harvest. Succeed.)

An academic shift away from "teaching to the test."  Instead, students learn by doing, embracing feedback, and fearlessly navigating trial and error to find real-world solutions.

 

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Growth Not by Choice 

What started as a desperate solution for one father's son rapidly transformed.  Reluctantly at first, Akida realized this wasn't just his son’s problem—it was a crisis facing families around the world.  Driven by the word-of-mouth of parents witnessing radical transformations in their own children, BHS had no choice but to grow if it was truly wanted to help as many kids as possible. 

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Today, BHS is a fully accredited by the Spanish Ministry of Education, as an official American international school in Spain, expanding from that basement of five students to over 500 students across two cutting-edge campuses.  BHS has a family-friendly primary campus, BHS Elementary & Preschool in the upper Gràcia district, and an innovative secondary campus in the 22@ tech district of Poblenou, under the original name, Barcelona High School. 

 

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The Result: True Success for Students

Without re-creating education, students face the failure of an outdated educational model—becoming obedient test-takers who enter the real world disconnected, overwhelmed, and unprepared for independent thought.

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By choosing BHS, students experience true success.  What is true success for students?  A school where students step into a family-like community with small classrooms where teachers act as mentors and coaches.  Students just don't perform better academically; they transform into confident, self-aware, and independent creators.

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At BHS, the future doesn’t belong to those who follow lines—it belongs to those who shape them.​​​