Despite all of the challenges faced in 2021, it was undoubtedly a very special year, filled with hope and meaningful accomplishments. After all, the children were able to return to the school setting and enjoy everything the school has to offer them: a space that teaches, challenges, enables deeply important interactions, creates memories and learnings for the rest of their lives. To take a look back on 2021 and learn more about what this school year represented, we talked with be.Living principals Analívia Lacerda and Patrícia Pavan. Check out the interview below 😉

bL: What was it like for you to see the school filled once again with the energy of the children after so long, moving back to 100% face-to-face classes?

Analivia: The school only makes sense when the children are here. To be able to welcome all of them back here, even with the safety protocols, was a huge relief after a long time of remote activities and many limitations. We saw in each child the importance of moving back to this special place that teaches, challenges and allows them to learn so much.

Patrícia: It was great to see the school come to life again with kids talking, playing, exploring and discovering new things. The background buzz, bodies meeting each other, dirty floors… all of that takes us one step closer to the reality we all want!

bL: What were the main challenges of the reopening process?

Analivia:  I think one of the main challenges was splitting up the school into groups that couldn’t interact with each other, due to tracking procedures. We’re a small school and group interactions are extremely valuable to us. Another huge challenge was to keep track of every child with some kind of symptom, since Covid covers a broad range of symptoms that are easily confused with other childhood diseases.

Patrícia:  There was also the process of gradually reinstating a full-time routine. It was quite demanding to come up with a hybrid proposal that made sense with everything we believe in when it comes to education, meaning and the learning process. Not to mention the masks, which changed how we relate and communicate with each other.

bL: What were the main accomplishments?

Analivia: I think the school setting and interpersonal relationships became particularly important during the pandemic. We are gregarious beings; we need interaction to grow and school is the space that challenges, stimulates and enables this interaction to play out.

Patrícia: Sure. We also learned to virtually connect, which made our teachers and children even stronger in the process, allowing them to learn more about digital resources and how to use them. We built a learning community. The partnership of families was crucial to carry on the educational process of the children, even outside the school environment. We reinvented education and this made each and every one of us stronger and better.

bL: What was it like to welcome back families into the school, with the recent Art Fair and MAC?  How important is it to have the families closer to the children and the school?

Analivia: We strongly believe that education is a joint effort with the families. Welcoming them back at the school meant a lot to us, and especially to the children, who were able to share their achievements and have their work validated by their family members.

5. Looking back, how would you rate the year 2021?

Analivia: Wow! That one calls for a big sigh! (both sigh and laugh…) Despite all of the challenges, I think 2021 was much better than 2020. Actually being at the school, despite all of the hardships, was much better than the alternative. We’re privileged for having the remote system in place, but remote teaching will never replace the actual school environment.