Work with, within and for the City

Knowledge is everywhere and just a touch way, on your mobile, in your pocket. With society’s evolution, new skills and competencies are part of our everyday life and schools have to prepare youngsters for this new reality. Societies call us to develop the so-called 21st century skills and competencies: Collaboration and teamwork, Creativity and imagination, Critical thinking and Problem solving, and guess what? We are in the 21st century. Schools have to choose to take a step into this new reality or stay away and push away the necessary transition. We have to make our choice, and this work (part of the Open Schools for Open Societies project (https://www.openschools.eu/) is a reflexion of it.

Students work in groups and search for problems in Almada. Problems that have meaning for them and that they think they can make something about. After debating and voting, students present solutions, find stakeholders and promote the change with their ideias and work.

As teachers, we just break down barriers between classes and contents and now the different subjects contribute to enrich students’ works. There is no such thing as Civics, Mathematics or Portuguese Language classes. There are classes where the students can work on their projects and those are all classes: Civics, English Language, Information and Communication Technology, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry and Portuguese Language classes.