COLÉGIO ANDREWS - BRAZIL (as submitted to Planetary Magazine)

Submitted by Luciana Pimentel on Friday, October 22, 2004 at 09:57:34 AM EST.

STUDENTS WORKING IN THE YARD. Hi-res version of photo (81 K)

OUR SCHOOL - http://www.andrews.g12.br

Colégio Andrews is a private school located in Rio de Janeiro. It is an 85-year-old
traditional school which has approximately 1250 students from Educação Infantil to Ensino Médio.
At Colégio Andrews, English is considered an important subject in our school curriculum.
Lessons happen weekly, and last for 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Each class holds an average of 15 to 20 students.
Our main goals are to develop the principles of citizenship, ethics and respect for individual differences. We are also devoted to nurturing our students’ inner competences, such as autonomy, self-initiative and creativity in order to prepare them to face the unexpected and improbable situations that life can present.
The beliefs behind the practices through which we shape our students’ development are grounded in the importance of the person as a whole, not only as a simple deposit of information and contents. At Colégio Andrews, how the student processes the information given and transforms it into knowledge is what matters.
We are truly interested in helping our students access a wide range of cultural aspects from different parts of the world through an online educational society.

Our students come from the middle and upper classes and they all have a huge knowledge of the community concerns and issues. They are quite interested in sports, arts (especially music and cinema), politics, environment and social problems. They have easy access to museums, theatres, computers, cable TV, newspapers, libraries and other resources.
Most of our students frequently travel abroad and go to private English courses to improve their fluency.

LEARNING GOALS

During this project, I think that relevant issues such as voluntary work, elections, use of drugs, city problems, youth participation in the media system, influence of publicity on people’s choices, consumerism and sexual diseases could be good points for reflection and discussion.
Otherwise, I believe that other kinds of subjects should be taken into consideration with the purpose of involving and motivating students. These would be: entertainment, sports competitions, local bands, online youth newspapers, choosing a profession, analyzing careers, etc…
The Highestwire Project fits perfectly into the rest of our syllabus, because the ideas behind it are very much in line with our methodology.
Our students frequently go to the computer lab to participate in activities on the internet.


TECHNOLOGY

We have a very well equipped computer lab with 18 personal computers and all the associated technology, including open access to internet and digital cameras.
Besides this, we also have TVs, video cassettes and dvds.

PROJECTS

We work with American and British student’s books and literature books.
Every year we develop a cross-curriculum project that involves all the subjects.
These projects always follow a suggested theme such as : “ From the planet that we have to the planet that we want” , “ Being a Brazilian citizen” , “ To live is to build values”.
In 2004, we are talking about an issue that Edgar Morin, a contemporary French philosopher, has written about: “The planetary citizen” .
Within this project, it will be perfectly feasible to include this online magazine.

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