Collective planning by teachers in remote context
During the covid-19 pandemic, the municipal management of Almirante Tamandaré (PR), in Brazil, developed a method of collective planning of teaching activities, integrating all school units of the city.
All the pedagogical activities that will be developed in that two-month period have a guiding theme in common. Every two months, the Department of Education sends to all working groups some suggestions for topics that are connected to the reality of students, such as the right to health or socio-environmental rights, and each group chooses what makes the most sense for its territory.
Then, the teachers are divided into pairs and each one is responsible for a subject. In the case of a group of eight teachers, for example, one pair is responsible for Portuguese, another for Mathematics, one for Science, and the others are responsible for one subject each. In the meantime, the resource room teacher and the workgroup pedagogical coordinator offer any support needed.
Schools in the same territory, which are geographically close and have social and cultural similarities, are grouped together. Within this group, all teachers who teach for the same year form a working group, which meets virtually every fortnight to plan remote pedagogical work. Each cluster also has a pedagogical coordinator and a teacher from the multifunctional resource room.
With the activity proposals ready, the whole group meets again and socializes the practices among colleagues and with the coordinator. Afterwards, the group separates and each teacher goes back to her unit where, together with the school's pedagogical coordinator, they adapt the activities according to the Pedagogical Political Project (PPP) and the specific characteristics of the school and the class.
The proposals are then sent to students through WhatsApp or in printed format, by Casas Sementeiras, a collective formed by the community that supports the distribution of materials in the territories.
In the next meeting, in fifteen days, the teachers share the evaluation of the activities carried out by the students and indicate the potentialities and challenges that the classes encountered. Then they switch pairs and subjects and start the process again.