Nossa Senhora do Carmo School
The Nossa Senhora do Carmo School was founded by the Catholic nun Terezinha, from the “Carmelo Sagrado Coração de Jesus e Madre Tereza”, in 2005. It started off as a literacy workshop for six farmers from the community where the sisters had been settled in 1999. In 2005, along with Frei Betto and Carmelo’s friends, they raised funds and built the school in an area donated by the Maristas Sisters. In 2007, the school started offering kindergarten and middle school education. In 2015, advised by the Âncora Project and José Pacheco, and inspired by Escola da Ponte (Portugal), they revamped their curriculum and methodology and started working with project pedagogy in multi-grade classrooms. Their goal is to develop their students autonomy, the freedom to choose what, when and how to study, based on their own curiosity about the world around them. Today, the students are split into four groups. Each group of fifteen children occupies a “learning space” and has a tutor, responsible for the studying and learning guides.
