Escola Municipal Waldir Garcia

The transformation of Escola Municipal Professor Waldir Garcia began in 2010. For years, this primary school located in Amazonas, the capital of one of Brazil’s poorest states, had some of the nation’s highest dropout and failure rates. Many days, students did not reach the school gates, opting instead to work to support their family. The situation became even graver with the arrival of thousands of Haitian and Venezuelan refugees fleeing poverty and destruction. The school’s climate was rigid and formal; each day began with a structured reading of the academic plan, and students were led between classes in absolute silence. Children were booted from classes for making noise or showing up late, while immigrant students were trapped in a cycle of failure, testing in a language they did not understand. Faced with a student passage rate below 70 percent, the school’s principal took a decisive first step: The school would no longer fail any students or ask any students to repeat a grade. It was time to reimagine a welcoming, inclusive school that would meet every child and family as they were.

At the same time, a regional group of parents and teachers known as the Collective Family School of Amazonas announced it wanted to invest in transforming local education. These families sought to develop innovative schools into which they might enroll their children (Professor Waldir Garcia Municipal School, n.d.). With ministerial support, they invited experts from as far as Portugal to share innovative ideas with the community. Here, Waldir’s principal saw an opportunity: She brought these experts into conversation with her school community to build a new educational experience from the ground up. Over the course of just a few months, she convened parents, staff members, and students for weekly visioning sessions to rewrite the school’s education plan. This produced four guiding developmental goals for the entire community: empathy, creativity, teamwork, and leadership. Grounding these is a crosscutting commitment to inclusion, a mission of community embeddedness, and a fundamental belief that everyone has potential (L. C. Santos, personal communication, June 14, 2021).

Today, the school is a welcoming, democratic, and flexible space serving the entire local community—with special focus on engaging families as partners. Everyone is valued as an educator and a learner. Parents come to share skills and knowledge, from Haitian baking secrets to the mathematics of construction. Each student and staff member has a dedicated mentor, often a parent or community member, with whom they meet at least monthly to reflect on their personal development. Instead of presenting a rigid timetable, the school opens in accord with parent and student needs. Children are welcomed in for early-morning self-study, for example, if their parents need to get to work. Equally, students can choose to complete their studies at home or in the garden, if they prefer. Parents are also always welcome, with many bringing their kids into school on weekends for movies or family learning activities.

This adaptability proved especially valuable during the COVID-19 pandemic as the school became a regional referral center for community support. The school remained open to provide food and shelter for community members and leveraged teacher familiarity with flexible learning to design and monitor students’ remote learning. All of this has led to incredible growth on national assessments: The school’s education index rose from 3.9 out of 10 before the reforms to over 7.5—a full two points higher than the state average. Waldir serves roughly 250 students annually, one-fourth of whom are immigrants. Additionally, it trains schools across the state—and, in partnership with UNICEF, Ashoka, and other institutions across the globe—on community-centered, democratic, and inclusive education transformation (L. C. Santos, personal communication, June 14, 2021).

An in-depth look at the curriculum and school operations shows that Waldir operates on a full-time education model, a type of Brazilian schooling that extends and widens the curriculum of the traditional four-hour school day. Students flexibly attend classes from 7:10 a.m. to 4:10 p.m. The day includes interactive whole-class instruction provided in age-based classrooms with students grouped at circular tables of diverse ability levels. These classes engage in “territorial learning,” or educational activities that bring students out of the classroom and into the broader community. This includes everything from trips to study Indigenous farming practices to school cleanup activities.

For much of the day, students attend cross-disciplinary workshops or follow personalized study guides that focus on individual interests and allow them to flexibly participate in teachers’ whole-group lessons. Study guide development occurs in partnership with individual tutors who are members of the school or broader community. These tutors facilitate weekly sessions where students reflect on their life path, journalize about their personal development, and devise weekly projects to help them grow. But these tutorials are not limited to students. Each staff member works with a community tutor to reflect on their personal and professional development. In addition to serving as tutors, parents regularly share their skills and knowledge through in-class activities or new workshops. These respond to both students’ interests and parents’ talents. For example, if a student wants to learn about the rainforest, a call may go out to ask parents with Indigenous roots to share their experiences with forestry and conservation.

A diversity of programs complement individual and whole-class learning. Weekly assemblies in each classroom provide space for student reflection on classroom attitudes and behaviors, as well as broader challenges facing the school. Students might discuss difficulties learning in a loud space, for example, and propose solutions that the broader community can vote on at a whole-school assembly. Additionally, during a daily open period, teachers host workshops covering eight themes: theater, dance, sports, philosophy, science, literature, English, and mathematics. Rather than following a prescribed curriculum, teachers dream up dynamic and cross-disciplinary approaches to each subject. For example, a natural science teacher excited about botany developed a school garden that also functions as an open-air laboratory. In partnership with the state university, she hosts virtual visits with researchers, who teach students about sustainable gardening practices.

Each year, the community builds a curricular mandala, displayed as a set of concentric circles. Circular layers display learning dimensions such as skills, knowledge, and pedagogical approaches—for example, self-assessment, oration, and cultural heritage. At the heart of the mandala is a human figure, showing that people are at the heart of schooling. The mandala guides students and staff in designing learning opportunities. The community can spin the wheels to show the various ways to nurture the school’s five developmental domains: intellectual, cultural, emotional, social, and physical (L. C. Santos, personal communication, June 14, 2021).

Goal: Redefine purpose of school for society
Student age: Primary
Tech level: No Tech
Lever: Providing Information, Building Relationships, Providing Resources
Place: School
Family role: Supporting
Open door policy for school-community engagement: Community members are welcome to visit Waldir at virtually any time of the day or night. In fact, the school doors are almost never locked. In addition to providing expanded access to resources and materials, from books to meals, this policy fosters a culture of communality and collective ownership. Parents can meet with their children over lunch, for example, or stop by to receive tips on helping their child with homework. But their regular presence also helps parents proactively serve the school community, informally offering to lend a hand on their day off or jumping into a vacant role while a teacher is completing a professional development session. Alternatively, through constant contact with school staff and students, they might decide to create an entirely new role, such as offering weekend cooking classes to students interested in culinary science.

Student age: Primary
Tech level: No Tech
Lever: Providing Information, Building Relationships, Designing
Place: School
Family role: Creating
Weekly democratic assemblies and discussion board: Every Thursday, the school hosts an assembly for parents, students, and staff to resolve community concerns. Throughout the week, community members write challenges or ideas on a discussion board in the school’s entryway. This board structures the assembly agenda. To scaffold the conversation, students lead small prediscussions in their respective classrooms. They then help facilitate the assemblies, practicing democratic governance. Every community member is invited to share their opinions on each agenda item and then vote on solutions for that item. For example, if a parent notes that her work schedule prevents her from attending weekly assemblies, students would discuss solutions in their classrooms and then help parents and staff discuss and vote on a proposal to allow parents to participate via phone. The community would then decide on an assessment plan, such as surveys carried out by students and staff in tutorial groups, and a date to discuss whether the solution was successful.

Goal: Improve learning and development, Redefine purpose of school for society
Student age: Primary
Tech level: Low-tech
Lever: Providing Information, Building Relationships
Place: Home
Family role: Supporting
Digital parent-school chat groups: Teachers and administrators establish digital parent-school communication channels, largely through WhatsApp and Facebook. These groups are divided by theme or class to create opportunities for smaller, targeted conversations. Families and staff use these groups to share needs, disseminate information, and plan activities. A teacher might, for example, alert the class WhatsApp group that he needs a volunteer to cover his classroom while he attends a professional development seminar. Parents would then coordinate coverage.

Goal: Improve learning and development, Redefine purpose of school for society
Student age: Primary
Tech level: No Tech
Lever: Building Skills, Building Relationships, Providing Resources
Place: School
Family role: Creating
Parents as community teachers: Waldir seeks to demonstrate that all knowledge is valuable by inviting families to teach and share their passions. This sharing may be structured or informal. Parents might offer specific ideas to individual classrooms, or staff might recruit parents based on running lists of family talents. For example, in the Flavors of Knowledge program, immigrant parents come to school multiple times each year to share a traditional recipe from their home country. A Haitian mother, for instance, told the story of Haitian independence while cooking “freedom soup.” Sharing opportunities allow parents to demonstrate the wealth of ways that one has knowledge. One mother who worked full time as a cook wanted to help in classrooms rather than kitchens, so she brainstormed with teachers to find a way to share her other passion: singing. She taught kids a new song and walked them through how she learned the complex lyrics.

Goal: Redefine purpose of school for society
Student age: Primary
Tech level: No Tech
Lever: Building Relationships
Place: School
Family role: Supporting
Weekly feedback on innovation implementation: When Waldir adopted its new educational vision, it committed to a one-year trial run during which it would not fundamentally alter its new approach. The school realized that its focus on flexibility could lead to internal inconsistencies. For example, changing a core educational pillar after only one discussion could leave teachers unsure what they were supposed to do in class the next day. But Waldir leaders also wanted to keep track of community learning throughout the year. As such, the school hosted weekly discussion sessions for parents, staff, and students. The focus of these discussions was to share individual perceptions, reactions, challenges, and ideas surrounding the new curricular practices. These conversations allowed all stakeholders to feel heard, captured insights for an end-of-year community assessment, and gave the experiment enough time to show its potential.

Goal: Redefine purpose of school for society
Student age: Primary
Tech level: No Tech
Lever: Providing Information, Designing
Place: School
Family role: Creating
Annual collaborative revision of the school’s guiding document: Throughout the year, community members are invited to post their questions, concerns, and ideas on a large board in the school meeting hall. Then, one day each year, the whole school pauses for discussion day, when members of the community convene to discuss and debate what is or is not working. This structured democratic process reassures parents, students, and staff that they will have space to express their frustrations. At the end of the day, the community votes on propositions, such as whether to extend the length of daily workshops, and codifies a guiding document for the year to come.

Goal: Improve learning and development, Redefine purpose of school for society
Student age: Primary
Tech level: No Tech
Lever: Building Skills, Building Relationships
Place: School
Family role: Supporting
Community member tutors: Every student and staff member selects a personal tutor who acts as a long-term confidant and reflective partner. Tutors meet weekly with their tutees to discuss challenges, share dreams, and structure individual development plans for the coming weeks, months, and years. Tutees keep life plan diaries in which they reflect on their educational purpose and map out discrete learning goals, such as completing a small research project on photosynthesis to explore an interest in botany. By setting flexible tutorial hours based on community schedules, the school encourages parents to serve as tutors and to participate as tutees themselves. In fact, the principal’s personal tutor is a school mother.

Goal: Redefine purpose of school for society
Student age: Primary
Tech level: No Tech
Lever: Providing Information
Place: School
Family role: Creating
Community visioning workshops: When Waldir’s transformation process began, the school convened Friday workshops to show how innovative learning might work in practice at Waldir. The community sponsored some teachers to go on a trip to visit innovative Brazilian schools, while other community members conducted online research into school reforms. Each week, the school met to showcase learnings. For example, a teacher hosted a visioning workshop by showing a video about an outdoor adventure school in the state of Sao Paulo. This process of concretely sharing and discussing real-world innovations embedded the idea that transformation was, indeed, possible.

School staff

Families

People

Spaces

Financial

Technology

Democratic participation is at the heart of Waldir’s successful transformation. The school counts on students, parents, and staff as designers and implementers. Children and parents come together to discuss and vote on educational change. Families regularly lead activities at school, which has bred a culture of collective responsibility and ownership. In this way, every member of the community is both invested in and accountable for the school’s educational activities. When parents design their own workshops, for example, they have a direct stake in—and become champions of—the school’s democratic mission. Participation also extends the school’s capacity for transformative experiments by crowding in community members and their many talents. This is rooted in a central motto: “living and valuing plurality.” Escola Municipal Professor Waldir Garcia succeeds by ensuring each member of the school community feels valued as a learner, teacher, and individual. Parents, who are explicitly told that their skills and knowledge are worth sharing, become increasingly motivated to contribute. Children, seeing their parents participate as teachers, become increasingly committed to growth and learning.

Of course, democratic dialogue did not always lead to smooth sailing. At the start of the reforms, the school experienced massive resistance. Parents saw the changes as creating an undisciplined, chaotic mess. In fact, one parent lodged a formal complaint with the municipal secretary. Long-held trust between parents and the administration helped bridge this divide. The principal, long involved in the wider community as an advocate for children’s rights, was able to use her past successes as evidence to convince families that this experiment was worth trying. The school’s culture of flexibility and message that it must mold itself to serve the community further assuaged families’ fears. By showing willingness to open the school at different hours and to quickly tackle community-requested services such as weekend food service, Waldir secured trust for bigger projects.

Issues of planning and codification further hampered change efforts. Initially, Waldir shifted its curriculum without clearly spelling out its full pedagogical approach. This led to clear divisions in the school day, with traditional activities in the morning and dynamic approaches in the afternoon. Parents perceived this separation as demonstrating that innovative learning was less valuable than traditional pedagogies and began removing students before the afternoon. The school overcame this by consistently articulating and embedding its pedagogical rationale in all aspects of schooling. School leaders circulated a “political pedagogical project” document clarifying the values behind their approach, such as democratic participation and multidimensionality. They explained, for example, that a child has the power to decide if she wants to spend the entire day in the garden. Additionally, Waldir demonstrated evidence that its new approach worked. Beyond hosting meetings to discuss pedagogical theory and other model schools, they highlighted real-time student transformations. Parents, seeing their children growing and enjoying school, could not help but champion Waldir’s approach.

Professor Waldir Garcia Municipal School (AM). (n.d.). Escolas Transformadoras.
https://escolastransformadoras.com.br/escola/escola-municipal-professor-waldir-garcia/