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Centro Alfredo Pinheiro, Lisbon, Portugal Ines Ferro Ribeiro The Centro Alfredo Pinheiro is a school with children from all different social and economic backgrounds. It is part of the Lisbon Holy House of Mercy (Santa Casa da Misericordia de Lisboa), which was created in the last century - as a charity organization - with strong connections with the Church. The school is not quintessential in the way that it teaches. Children call the teachers by their first names and the idea of having a strict student-teacher relationship is not really part of their method. Half of their day is spent in ‘proper’ classrooms where they learn math, English, Portuguese, biology amongst other subjects and the other half is spent doing something different, creative and visual – and the children have a say on what they want to do. The children I did the KEEPS project with were 7 and 8 years old. All 20 children had so much energy and impressively inquisitive minds. They were fascinated to see someone new in the classroom – and were just as quick to ask questions as they were to show how good they were at mixing paint and making green! I went around the room so everyone could introduce themselves and say their name and age and some of them, not satisfied with that, wanted to introduce their friends too. They would point to the girl or boy sitting next to them and say this is ‘Carolina, she is 8 years old and our mothers are friends’. When I asked them to paint the most important thing to them there was not one hint of hesitation, no one putting their hands on their heads nor their arms up in the air – instead - in a rather calm and confident way they all nodded and quickly grabbed a clean brush and asked if they could whisper their idea to me. They were so ingenious and interested when they were painting and proud of what they were doing. Family, best friends, nature, football, the sun, the park, the sea were all amongst the brilliant paintings that came out of the KEEPS afternoon. One of the boys even drew himself! Which I thought was straight to the point. And another one when asked about why the sun was the most important thing to him, answered ´because without the sun there would be no light and without light there would be no day.’ That is so true - I thought - when I left later that afternoon. |
