Where it all started...

I've been a teacher for 5 years now and before that I had 4 years of interships and observations inside of various classrooms. The schools where I've been to and the things I've seen have led me to wonder if I would ever find the ideal school. 

 This year I have finally decided to pursue that dream and go find that school.

I don't follow any particular method and tend use a little bit of every one I know. And I constantly search for new methods, different ways of practicing what I love most: to teach.

...

Nowadays, in Portugal, it is becoming more and more popular that elementary schools say they follow a different methodology or use a more modern approach when teaching their students. However, when one observes how the pedagogical differentiation is made inside of the classroom, very often one finds that this differentiation is based on the teacher helping more or less directly those students who are showing some type of problem. Real creativity and autonomy are very hard to find when those classes are observed.

The most common schools are still the so called “traditional schools”, which were given this name due to the method they use. In these schools the teachers follow the ancient methodology, where they are the center of the class and the knowledge is transmitted from them to the students, in a one-way monologue. The children hear it, copy it from the board and repeat it until they have memorized the lesson. As stated before, these are the schools that are now claiming to be modernized, to be changing their ways into more modern approaches. And in some aspects they might even follow those new methodologies, but more often than not the ancient ways still prevail, creating somewhat of an unclear method to both observer and students.

Other than this one, there are at least three other main types of schools in Portugal.

One of them follows a movement called “Movimento Escola Moderna” (modern schools' movement). I was able to observe classes in one of these schools in the year 2007, for one month, and that is where I learned the skills I later on used in my classes here in Cape Verde.
However, in those schools, any influence from the traditional method is cast aside. This includes, for example: no use of schools books, the belief that the teacher is a mere facilitator of the knowledge, providing the students with the necessary tools to acquire it and the children are the ones in charge of their own learning process. In this movement there is very little opening to any traditional approach. Although it promotes autonomy and responsibility on the children, if not done correctly this method may also hide specific difficulties on each child, because they are the ones choosing what to work on and it is only natural that they are drawn to what it is easier for them to do.

Another type of school that also exists in Portugal bases its method on a pedagogue named João de Deus, who wrote a spelling book in 1876 that is still used today.

In these schools, the teacher uses the spelling book to teach the letters of the alphabet one by one. The vowels are the first ones to be taught, followed by the consonants with the simplest degree of complexity and only after that the consonants with the higher degree of complexity. After all the letters are learned on their own, they are put together to form sounds, then words, then phrases. This process usually takes a whole year, which means the students are only able to read fluently by the end of first grade.

These schools don't use any other method, nor allow any other type of approach than this one. Furthermore, this is a Portuguese spelling book, which means the students only learn the letters used in the Portuguese alphabet, leaving aside the K, the Y and the W.
Lastly, there are also Waldorf Schools in Portugal which base their methodologies on the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner. In these schools students have a lot more contact with arts and nature since the early stages of their development and they are stimulated in order to develop their social competence, as well as their critical mind and creativity. However, these schools tend to block the use of any electronic tool, as they are seen as “an act of spiritual poverty, emptied of the necessary moral principles that promote the values of freedom, peace and communion in the emerging society” (quote from Raul Guerreiro).

In Cape Verde, a former colony of Portugal thus highly influenced by its ways, most schools still follow the type of ancient teaching described in the first paragraph. Nonetheless, in 2012 the Ministry of Education started a new approach to the introduction of reading and writing, in the first grade. I witnessed all the meetings that were scheduled to explain to the teachers of the capital (Praia) how to conduct this method and the reaction of most was of total denial. The body of teachers that were gathered on those rooms, to learn about a new way of teaching and enrolling the students in their own process of learning, blocked the innovation.

During the following year, the Ministry of Education visited each school from the capital to observe the method being put into practice. One of the classrooms that was visited was mine. Being a method somewhat similar to those I had already observed in Portugal, for me it was easy to make it work. And the reaction of the Ministry was of complete surprise, which later on they explained me that was due to the fact that they had seen very little schools conducting the method as it should. As I did.

Given all the observations I made in Portugal, as well as in Cape Verde, and the fact that none of these schools seem to intertwine all these methodologies in order to create their own, I started thinking if in other countries would happen the same. I started thinking how other schools would develop their curricula and how the day-by-day school life would be in them.

With this research I intend to discover which are the methods adopted in those countries in elementary schools and if there is a reason for each school to commit to a single philosophy over so many others.