Reinvent, innovate and improve. These were the pillars used by teacher Débora Garofalo, who teaches technology at the public school EMEF Almirante Ary Parreiras, in São Paulo. Today, Débora competes with professors from various regions of the world at the most prestigious international award in the field of education, Global Teacher Prize 2019.
The professional argues that the traditional school model is limited and must be constantly reinvented so that students feel attracted and interested in studying a particular subject. According to Deborah, the new generation does not learn in the conventional way, with chalk, books and blackboard.
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Since she was a child, Deborah taught classmates with learning difficulties at school with a small blackboard and chalk that her mother had given her as a gift. From there, a passion for teaching and education emerged.
Its students, who are between 6 and 14 years old, are constantly influenced to maintain sustainable habits. Students go out on the streets of communities in São Paulo collecting garbage, which is later used in a productive and innovative way. The collected materials have already turned into a water filter, traffic light, ice cream machine and even renewable energy to replace the electric cat in houses in the favela.
The students' sustainable projects became a success in the community. And so the “Robótica com Scrap” project was born, which became a reference in Brazil and gained prominence worldwide. With this initiative, many students have already decided their careers in areas related to science, such as: physics, programming and engineering.
With the project, in four years, the students were able to remove more than 700 kg of garbage from the streets, a fact that contributed to the increase in EMEF Almirante Ary Parreiras in the Basic Education Development Index (Ideb), which measures the quality of education, rose from 4.2 to 5.2.
As a finalist for one of the most important awards in the area of education, Garofalo says he will allocate all the money to build robotics laboratories in public schools in the country. She also points out that if she does not win, the lesson that it is possible to make a difference with few resources, and that it is necessary to innovate, is important to revolutionize Brazilian education.