This June, 20 school managers, and educator-coordinators of a leading Brazilian school in São Paulo, Brazil, underwent a 2-day training with Rosa Alegria, director of the Hub Brazil with the support of Aline Alegria who has been teaching futures for kids in a pioneering initiative.
This teacher training was focused on Futures Thinking. These skills help students learn, and so they are vital to success in school and beyond.
The FourC School has its pedagogical line based on the 4Cs, as the name of the school already says. In the applications of futures thinking concepts these are grounded in the concepts taught initially by Peter Bishop in the Houston framework: (framing/scanning/forecasting/visioning/design/planning). Participants chose the topic "Education" to be explored throughout the framework. The result was a vision of the Future for the FourC school for the year 2043 with artistic and graphic representations of what it represents. The educators got in touch with the changes through signs and trends, something that is not common in the school environment; they learned to map the topic, to scan, and they used powerful tools to identify impacts of changes. They also used creative visualisations that made them come into contact with future generations up to the year 2100, inspired by the cognitive imagination methodologies of the futurist Oliver Markley. It was an exciting moment and some of them were able to feel textures, smells, colours, sensations that made them move in time and get in touch with their ancestry for future generations.
Teach the Future’s Futures Thinking Playbook was the basic instrument for this course that had a high creative voltage among the participants. The game "The Thing from the Future" created by our partner Stuart Candy offered very imaginative results. The founder of the school Sarah Hughes has already named this group: the "First Futures Teachers in Brazil". Pride and enthusiasm marked this course.
"I feel that my profession as a futurist is reaching a level above anything I've ever done, because offering educators the fundamentals and practices of foresight is transformative, and has the power to transform the school system", says Rosa Alegria.
Rosa's next mission: Northeast Brazil, for the two remote cities, Cajazeiras and Souza in undeveloped social status located at the hinterlands of the State of Paraiba. Rosa Alegria was invited by the local government to talk about how to teach the future in the schools.”It will be an open event with public sphere teachers with a high rate of poverty that need to create desirable futures and identify their own strength to reinvent themselves."—Rosa_4, Rosa Alegria.
“Participating in the training “Studies of the Future for Educators” with Rosa and Aline was an incredible opportunity to broaden our gaze to the future, understanding ourselves as agents of transformation to build the paths we desire. We were able to dream and create together, reflect on our practices, and how we can impact the people around us, both inside and outside the school. Rosa and Aline established a great connection with the whole group, making these two days moments that will certainly be remembered for their extreme relevance, meaning, and at the same time lightness!” — Mariana Bello – HR Specialist & Educators Development
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Get a sample lesson from the Futures Thinking Playbook here and check out other complimentary learning resources in our online library.
