Colored Fan of Possibilities





Team:
Gustavo Pedrozo
gustavopedrozo@live.com
Pedro Henrique Oliveira
pedrohroliveira42@gmail.com

Social Group:
Ana Claudia Pinto
aclaudiapinto88@hotmail.com

Municipal School Pedro Ernesto
Rua Professor Abelardo Lóbo, 25 - Lagoa, Rio de Janeiro

Summary:

The place where we accomplished our project is the Municipal School of Pedro Ernesto, in the neighborhood of Lagoa. There we observed the project “REALFA”, which consists of a single special class for students who have failed multiple years, subjects or have already entered the school behind their natural graduation schedule. Project REALFA works with kids aging from 9 to 14, and it teaches them the basics of Portuguese language, such as reading and writing, all the way to basic mathematics, such as adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying. On our participation and interaction with the project REALFA, we worked with the only operating teacher in such division, Ana Claudia Pinto, which teaches no classes other than the one mentioned. Based on the sum of words that compose the vocabulary universe of Ana Claudia Pinto we recognize to be the theme of our project: “Exercises of being colored in the world” One of the activities related to our chosen theme, was seen on the day of our final experimentation. That day, Ana Claudia provided an activity for the kids in which they were divided in groups, each group with a sample of the prototype in hands, having to place colored pieces in the order that the teacher would tell them to. This activity reminded me of a phrase Ana Claudia once said: “We have to bring color to these children’s lives. Their lives are already too black and white due to their daily struggles” Based on the experimentation of our first ideas, the concept that defined the objective of our project, was that, we would have to focus in experiments which involved numbers, syllables, raffles, complementary colors, dominos and memory games with images. We developed our final product based in circular sectors (close example: a pizza slice), made out of “Parana’ paper”, colored in acrylic paint and wrapped all around with contact paper (in such a way that the teacher would be able to write on it with a regular white board marker and erase it as many times as necessary). Every circular sector brings in it self, a small whole in which stands its central axis, made out of a rigid wooden stick, which supports it all. The prototype’s main purpose is to provide the tools necessary for the teacher to create fun interactive classes, in which she may work with any subject regarding numbers, words and even images. The product provides freedom to the teacher when working with her students in way that she can continuously re-use it by simply writing, erasing and doing it again and gain for as long as she needs it.

Gustavo Pedrozo

We have reached the end of the semester and consequently the end of this project. Although is it really the end? Or is it the beginning of a whole new interpretation of life? I remember my first day; I had just arrived at a tent-like class and did not know I was going to be Ana Branco’s student. I thought my teacher would be Vicente Barros, just like on project 1; a teacher I had liked a lot, since he helped me develop my way of thinking and learning, therefore I had chosen him again this semester. Arriving inside the classroom, I saw Mr. Vicente Barros together with another fellow female teacher, and I remember asking another student: “Does she also teach this class?” and he replied: “Yes, she is Ana Branco”. At the time, a flash came to my mind and I remembered of the “big Ripper”, another teacher which I had had the opportunity to work with for a short amount of time but that also taught me a lot. I started remembering the things Ripper would tell me about Ana, such as her different and innovative way of thinking. Someone who really cares about environmental causes, not to mention the fact that she has an exceptional conduct. At the time I froze and thought: “Wow, am I going to be capable to face this formidable teacher duo?” By the time I got my thoughts straight, they were already interacting with the class, more specifically asking me about a topic I had never thought profoundly of, and that is gratitude. I remember until this day, that I responded to their topic by showing gratitude and thanking Mr. Vicente for being a great teacher, my project 1 partner; Pedro Henrique, for our project 1 success and finally my grandfather, which has always been like a father to me. Later on when this project started, I visited several places and found myself with a vast number of options for the setting of the project. With time I then chose the Pedro Ernesto School, in Ana Claudia’s special needs class. I chose her class because I really admired the project she was working with, REALFA, which is basically a class for kids that have failed multiples years, classes or simply have greater difficulties of following the regular school rhythm. All of that was already very pleasing to work with, although when I started the project I also discovered and excellent teacher and person, ready to help us in anything we needed and also accept help whenever she needed it, a great heart with an altruistic soul. After the four meetings and the word game, there came the first few challenges and experiments, however with the help of my partner Pedro Henrique, the teacher Ana Claudia, all of the working staff of REALFA and my university teachers, Ana Branco and Vicente, we managed to overcome every challenge and accomplish every task required. Afterwards, came a few new challenges, such as dealing with new variables and running out of ideas still, with another little burst of motivation we managed to overcome these problems as well. Nevertheless I have to thank once again Ana Claudia, who helped us majorly, in times when we would arrive to her with bags and bags of experiments done, and with her experience and creativity, would help us develop more and more activities and experiments to interact with the kids and grab their attention in ways that were sometimes only possible with her “magical touch”. At proper time, came the first prototypes, and step-by-step our final idea for the project was taking shape like a light at the end of the tunnel. We invested a lot on the idea of the “Board of Numbers” which worked with the idea of a raffle together with the option of exchanging the little boxes and working with not only just numbers, but also images, syllables, etc. We though this idea was perfect, however during a presentation to our university project teachers, a problem was detected, and that was the fact that our little boxes were quadrilateral with an stick in the center axis meaning there were only four sides available for display, therefore, only four options of use. Then both teachers proposed a solution, which was to make our “box”, circular. At first I was very skeptical and even scared due to the fact our deadline for completion and delivery of the project was closer and closer. Dwelling on the idea day after day, spending whole nights awake, we finally managed to solidify our final ideal. The ideal we came up with bases it self on circular sectors (something similar to a slice of pizza) made up of “parana” paper, wrapped all around by contact paper, in way that the REALFA teacher would be able to write and erase on it as many times as she would want to. We made them in three different sizes (small, medium and large) and different colors. After talking about all these moments during the making of the project, I can conclude my thoughts by saying that this project helped me grow as an individual. Every challenge, every solution found, every single idea was part of a path that my partner and me went through, along with the university and REALFA teachers and staff, and obviously the kids, took all together and managed to reach the end of it with enormous success. I guarantee that in terms of learning, there was nothing left behind, I learned more than anything, to develop my creativity in order to see things differently and potentially be able so find solution not only to other social problems but also to my own personal ones. I thank my teacher Ana Claudia for having welcomed my partner and I in such thoughtful way and having had the patience and good heart to walk us through this project and help us conclude it with great success. At the very beginning of this journey she told me something that really moved me: “I seek to show these children a lot more than pure matter, I seek to show them a new way to interpret life. Color their lives, that’s all that’s missing in their black and white reality”. After that my way of seeing this took a turn and was never the same, for that I was no longer there just to interact with kids and complete my project, I had now seen her vision and wanted the same for the kids as she stated previously. I finally feel like I learned that we must seek to pass on to others all that we think may be good for us. I thank Pedro Henrique, my partner, for all the work we shared, for all our partnership in this journey, all the ups and downs, sometimes disagreeing, others agreeing, but always keeping our focus and our objective as first thing in mind, having to be humble in order to understand, accept and discuss the others opinion in order to move forward. I thank him for all the patience he had with me, for example in times where everything seemed to go wrong, he would calm me down and talk me out of these negative thoughts. I not only gained a partner in academic term but I also made a great friend for life, a person who stood by my side and now I am fully thankful towards him. Once again thanks for helping and consequently teaching me how to work better in- group, thinking more outside the box, and expressing myself.

Pedro Henrique Oliveira

This year I developed a lot more interest e will to work with design than usual. With the experience and knowledge acquired in the making of the project 1001, I managed to have even more capability and will to work on project 1002 with the teachers Vicente and Ana Branco even though I knew it was going to require a lot more responsibility than 1001. When it all began in the start of august, I realized it was very different from what I expected. At first I did not understand the purpose of the “gratitude” and found it really hard to compose such works, but throughout the project learned a lot from them. I started to see things I had no idea about. Beside academic growth I was felt a introspective personal growth as well. I started taking my learning from university to my home and consequently my daily life. Even in face of all the delays, problems and other issues, we managed to complete a product that will be very useful in the daily basis of the staff and children we worked with at REALFA. At the end, that feeling of work accomplished simply took over, by seeing all we had done, and the very last thought was that every little thing was worth this present moment. I really like to thank Ana Claudia for always being present when we most needed her. Her availability was very important to us, because sometimes we would be behind schedule and really need that extra push in order to keep going. Her dedication and attention with the children of REALFA was fundamental to spark inside of us the real will to improve in just a bit the quality of learning consequently of life for these kids. However it was only during the whole process that we really got to understand what her values and moral were really like. I learned to give a lot more value to the kids lives and obviously my own as well, due to the fact that they are far less privileged than I am and still have smile on their faces almost all of the time, over flooding with joy at some points. I would also like to thank Gustavo for having dealt with several different situations along this path, being always available whenever needed. In this walk we had together, I had the opportunity of learning lots of things and one of them was patience with others, because without it we would not have done it. I also learned a lot regarding respecting someone else’s opinion in other to achieve a greater solution to a problem, also something fundamental for our whole journey.

Group’s Evaluation on REALFA’s Teacher (Ana Claudia Pinto):

It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to work with Ana Claudia, a person that keep it self always available to listen to our ideas. An honest person, with superb work ethics, that is always thinking of other before herself. Not to mention the fact that her work was done from the bottom of her heart, for she was not there one to teach basic subjects, but instead she was mainly there to make a difference in these children’s lives, give them hope, future and simply brighter colors.

Discipline: DSG 1002
Class: 1AC
Professors: Ana Branco, Luis Vicente Barros, Luciana Grether, Maria do Socorro Calhau

e-mail: anabranc@puc-rio.br

Versão em Português