In Curitiba, Moonshot is an exercise for consciousness

The Moonshot Education Teachers’ Lounge Journey (Jornada Moonshot Educação Sala Dos Professores), held this Saturday (the 21st) in Curitiba, is aptly named. It is a journey, a “notable event or circumstance,” as the dictionary would have it. About 30 people, of different backgrounds and from different cities in Brazil, attend professors Marlon Brunetta, Paulo Tomazinho and José Motta. The three, Moonshot partners, have been together since the mid-2010s, when they understood that “education sometimes smells of mothballs.” The provocative line is Motta’s. He was the last to speak.

Objectively, they deliver these contents: Jigsaw Classroom, Team Based Learning and Design Thinking. And there is much talk of “active methodologies.” What draws attention is that these technologies in education do not necessarily depend on software or hardware other than an available mind and, perhaps, a piece of paper that can be written on. It has long been said that “a classroom full of computers can be very old,” as pedagogue and writer Luca Rischbieter keeps telling us.

There are real problems to be solved in the classroom. There would even be enough problems to occupy education’s intelligences for a lifetime. One is segregation. Although we are used to reading in the news about the consequences of children’s cruelty in bullying, the subject becomes more dramatic in this scenario: the inclusion of Black children in schools with a racist history. The “Moonshot boys,” as I affectionately call them, look at this.

Engagement

And in this, education and political communication meet: in the challenge of engagement. “The child may be at school, she leaves home, gets on the bus and arrives at school, but her attention may not be with her,” explains Tomazinho. Getting students to “think, pair, share” (think, check with classmates and share) is a method for them to take part in building knowledge. By feeling part of that construction, the chances of retaining knowledge and creating solutions for the world of life would increase.

Physicist and Harvard professor Eric Mazur, according to the story told at the Journey, began listening to what students said about his content. And he realized it was not what he had written in the lesson plan, which led him to change the way he works. That professor is one of the “boys’” theoretical and practical references.

Personal

As for me, I experienced a role of which I seek awareness. After pleasant, intelligent hours, we participants were challenged to carry out an activity x. At the end, I realized how arrogant I can be in my presumptions of “who needs this content.” Something very similar happened to me while reading the Gospels. Before, I thought: “That’s right, Jesus, give those Pharisees a talking-to!”, until I understood that I am the Pharisee.

The beauty lies in the light way the Journey brings awareness.