Chamusca's Inovative School Centre is all about aiming education as a perfect symbiosis between technology and human touch, between studying and wellness, between science, maths and arts. Right in the heart of Portugal, Chamusca is a charming town that heads the Municipality, with few more than 8000 inhabitants and lives mainly of agriculture and services. This special School is born from the belief that the children in this municipality deserve the best oportunities to achieve a bright future.
Local
Portugal
Municipality of Chamusca
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
Yes
ERDF : European Regional Development Fund
Project name: Chamusca's School Center
Project code | ALT20-02-5673-FEDER-000020
Main goal: Invest in education and vocational training for skills acquisition and lifelong learning
Approval year: 2016
Opening year: 2019
Investment value: € 2.025.971,31
EU funds: € 1.722.075,61
An old school that did not provide good conditions for the school community was requalified, harmonizing the old building's characteristics with the new architecture. Today it is a school at the forefront of national and european guidelines for quality education.
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Municipality of Chamusca Type of organisation: Public authority (European/national/regional/local) First name of representative: Paulo Last name of representative: Queimado Gender: Male Nationality: Portugal Function: Mayor Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Câmara Municipal da Chamusca, Rua Direita de São Pedro Town: Chamusca Postal code: 2140-098 Country: Portugal Direct Tel:+351 964 820 212 E-mail:presidencia@cm-chamusca.pt Website:https://www.cm-chamusca.pt/
Chamusca's Inovative School Centre is all about aiming education as a perfect symbiosis between technology and human touch, between studying and wellness, between science, maths and arts. Right in the heart of Portugal, Chamusca is a charming town that heads the Municipality, with few more than 8000 inhabitants and lives mainly of agriculture and services. This special School is born from the belief that the children in this municipality deserve the best oportunities to achieve a bright future
Wellbeing
transformative education
Identity and Citizenship
SDG2030
curricular enrichment activities
At the level of an ecological ecosystem, there are several projects that are developed according to the concept of reducing and reusing resources within everyone's reach. Textbooks, computers and school uniforms are just some of the examples we are implementing. We have a new proposal for a circular economy where children collect plastic from snacks and turn it into filament for 3D pens.
In the project "Digital Memory", ecological, social and economic aspects are considered in the context of lifelong learning. In addition to the craft factor of the artistic recreation of photography, this project is also able to capture the collective memory of this society and create a lineage of shared life, spaces, experiences and people in this community.
With SGD2030, different objectives are pursued, and campaigns are launched by the children to reuse resources, and different solutions are created depending on the projects they develop: for example, the creation of vegetable gardens, promoting the consumption of food locally.
Well-being is a concept that implies a holistic view of the child and thus a balance between knowledge, skills and abilities. In this context, in addition to mindfulness and yoga sessions, children also can explore other practises that promote their well-being to live a sustainable life. For this, it is necessary to develop active citizenship, which is developed every day in the curriculum enrichment activities.
After a profound remodelling, the former elementary schools from the 1950s have given way to the modern school centre. While respecting the surrounding architecture and maintaining the original design of the schools, a new school has been created, designed for the 21st century, with facilities that accommodate the new, creative and innovative methods of learning.
One of these spaces is the "Maker Space" - Creative Space, a place that allows children to get in touch with concepts from the fields of science, technology, engineering, art, computer science and mathematics, using the international methodology STEAM (Learning through Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics - STEAM).
Equipped with a laboratory dedicated exclusively to music, where activities to explore musical, dramatic and physical expressions take place; a laboratory for art, a space for informal education dedicated to aesthetic, plastic and artistic exploration, including painting, architecture, sculpture and other crafts; and the science laboratory, a space dedicated to exploration, discovery and learning, where answers are sought, and curiosity is encouraged.
The new school centre also has an inclusive space for students with special educational needs and a space for the learning support centre or structured classroom. Finally, this new infrastructure is also equipped with a modern gymnasium, a large dining hall, a multipurpose room and an amphitheatre, as well as offices for teachers, operational assistants and an office for all educators. In the outdoor area, a large playground and a playing field have been created.
The community of Chamusca also did not miss the call, and already on the first day several hundred people came to visit all the nooks and crannies of the new school, which has been remodelled with great care, as it is and will remain a project of affection and collective memory, being part of the childhood of the community.
Our social and inclusion model is goal-oriented, because we always base our projects on the Convention on Human Rights and Agenda 2030. Therefore, the pedagogy of cooperation and solidarity and the vision of education as a public good are always present in all projects.
Believing in a transformative education that helps create a more just, equitable and sustainable world, we share the educational responsibility to build together (school, community, families, self-sufficiency) a school that defends and expands the possibilities of each subject to achieve overall well-being.
Chamusca is a community with a high illiteracy rate among the older generations, and our concern is that all appreciate school and its knowledge. We also know that access to information, culture and even health care is not equal in a small inland town, so our focus is the principle of equality and inclusion, i.e., equal opportunities for these children, as they live in a rural centre with poor economic accessibility, i.e. the inclusion of students from a rural environment in a global world.
This involves taking preventive measures and dealing with all forms of exclusion and marginalisation, vulnerability and inequality in access to education and participation in learning processes. These preventive mechanisms are linked to the school and the official institutions of child and youth protection, which implement preventive and networked measures. We always start from the premise that every child is important and has equal importance.
In terms of governance, projects and other issues are discussed and shared with those directly involved, the children and the institutions that develop them.
The school centre is a place where students learn about the SDGs and where they do transformative work through curriculum enrichment activities. The classes contributed greatly to a greater environmental awareness, a more conscious school and a more tolerant and active educational community through the development of their projects.
The C.E.A. are divided into three areas of intervention and arranged by semester so that everyone can experience this dynamic. "Little Heroes" highlights different strategies that promote children's development through a joint action of school, families and community, in a collaborative sense, free from curricula and generic and prefabricated planning, open to inclusion and personal and collective promotion.
Vila Utopia develops creative and expressive skills in students by promoting the learning of skills and social concepts such as sustainability, citizenship and community.
The project EDUC'ARTE allows the integration of musical, dramatic and plastic expression through the exploration of children's. In each project area, different citizens benefit from the groups' ideas and thus society. Parents in presenting projects, colleagues and teachers in sharing practises and knowledge, social institutions, senior universities and the whole community in developing awareness campaigns. The impact of the actions can be seen in the dissemination of SDG ideas in videos on YouTube, in the actions developed with the Centre for Social Inclusion, in the social support centres, in the number of campaigns carried out and in the quality of services provided to the community in general. The initiatives involve technicians, caregivers and the senior community, an important component for heritage development.
We believe that the children themselves benefit from being in these qualities learning spaces and using pedagogical strategies that enable students to develop, understand the reality of their lives and work towards a more just society.
The school centre project was urgently needed for the welfare of the children and for quality education. Both locally and nationally, a new school was a priority. The School Centre project was born out of this need and out of the vision for education reflected in the Municipal Plan. The construction was a project financed between the FEDER program and the Municipality of Chamusca.
To live into a sustainable building, a project was needed to give life and dynamism to this space, to make it an experience for better education for all. The municipality, in collaboration with a school association and an association ATB, developed the innovative AEC model that gives back to children their role in the dynamics of society.
The Curriculum Enrichment Activities (AECs) in Chamusca are a national pilot project in which the community is testing a new concept of mentors instead of traditional monitors.
In collaboration with Associação Tempos Brilhantes, 15 mentors have been trained in three different areas (five each) to work with students on topics such as Educ'Arte, Little Heros (citizenship and community engagement), and Vila Utopia (awareness of the surrounding world), with children rotating through each project (one per semester).
The project designed for AEC aims to address issues such as interpersonal relationships, emotional intelligence and self-esteem. It considers the "Student Profile Matrix for the 21st Century" approved this year by the Ministry of Education.
In this way, technicians, mentors, teachers, guardians and students contributed to this AEC model and aligned the project to work effectively with the 17 SDGs.
Throughout our work, we always start with Education as an objective in it, itself, but also a means to achieve global goals for a better life. The school must be democratic and democratizing, open to diversity and difference and that daily promotes autonomy, cooperation, solidarity and respect.
Thus, education is a fundamental part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In the SDGs, we review the essential attitudes and values to cover the different literacies, mental and social health, emotional competences and key competences for community development. And we make the SDGs the banner of this innovation centre
Chamusca's Innovative School Centre is an initiative that is an approach of Wellbeing to help shape the future we want. Based on an evolving framework that helps to create an ecologic ecosystem. Defining knowledge, competencies, skills, and values that students need to embrace a full education, throughout life.
Believing in the capacity of transformative education, and the concern with education as a common goal, we defined the guidelines to a social contract, meaning that the community has important guidance to this well-being. One of the main goals of our education plan is Identity and Citizenship, contributing to promoting and building processes of local citizenship to value identity and its genesis, recognizing in the school a value of tangible and intangible cultural heritage.
Creating a school focused on the future and technology seemed to follow the trend, but this project gained more impact by combining empirical experience with this concept.
We considered the need for know-how, to feel organic materials and crafts in balance with Innovative and Creative Learning Laboratories. Another aspect of innovation is the curriculum enrichment activities, where students are given a voice and the ability to act to develop their projects and ideas.
For us, education does not end in school, but in a cosmopolitan, cooperative and inclusive system. We encourage communication and interaction between all the elements that shape the project: the IPSS, the school association, the municipality, the parents' and guardians' associations, the nuclear family and the wider family, friends and the surrounding community. Promote the exchange of experiences with professionals from other institutions. We base our activities on the values of respect, honesty, tolerance, mutual help, initiative and commitment, which we consider fundamental and essential values for building our society.
Inspired by recent educational references it was developed a new model for Curriculum Enrichment Activities (AEC), which aims at the full education, well-being, and fulfilment of children and young people, bringing together the multiplicity of human experience with active citizenship.
his model has the capacity to be universal as it works with the SDGs, which are also universal. In addition to this feature, activities can be transversal to school content, reinforcing learning.
The three project areas are broad enough to include many projects and ideas. About technologies, the model is based more on a humanist basis, first reinforcing valuing and respecting the other and empirical experience.
Another aspect we value in this model is playing. Through playing, children learn the rules, respect for others and develop their creative abilities. Playing is a child's right and must be considered for their healthy development and growth.
Transforming education is one that consists of a social contract where everyone sees education as a common good. By reimagining different ways to create opportunities for people to learn from each other and value each other in all fields. Through active learning, with new work models, through bringing emotion as an important and motivating part of learning, we transform education.
Promote the active involvement of children in matters that affect them and listen to their views and take them into account in decision-making processes.
The 2020 pandemic brought us a new reality. In a context that completely changed our reality and came to challenge a different world, there was a need to reach those who were far away. We reinvented the way of working with learning and created digital supports with activities for the entire community.
The creation of an OBE2140 page allowed us to continue the relationship and contact with the students, and the school centre became a space to produce content. Through this page and in the future a YouTube channel, we could reach everyone who was far away. After the pandemic, OBE2140 continues to transmit content.
One of our concerns was the preservation of the immaterial memory of the community. With the construction of the page and with some resources, we are working on the digital memory.
It is considered: AEC in the 1st cycle of basic education the activities of an optional nature and of eminent recreational, educational and cultural character. The Curriculum Enrichment Activities are part of a broader strategy of articulation between the functioning of the school and the organization of social responses in the field of family support.
As with any project, there are advances and setbacks. The model of curriculum enrichment activities is no exception. At the beginning of this model, we had other areas of intervention that went through philosophy for children and learning to play. The technicians were present for activity, that is, the affective relationship with the students was weak.
We restructured the model and considered the presence of one technician per semester and the project area was also per semester.
During the model, it was decided that the relationship of trust created with the students was the most important aspect of learning. In this way, the technician became a mentor who developed the two project areas: Vila Utopia and Little Heroes. Once a week, a mentor from Educar'te works together with the class mentor.
Inserted in Vila Utopia, work was developed on the UBBU platform. The mentors competed in the competition held by UBBU and won the "Community" award.
The community is transformed by the educational need to learn, teach, know and transmit values for a sustainable coexistence for this and future generations.
