Is It Possible to be Educated in a Rural Setting?

The Agricultural Family School (AFS) in Irará works with various types of training, in the school itself as well as in the community. We offer training courses in the form of a field day: an activity conducted in a rural setting with the participation of the students’ parents and people from the community.

My name is Aldelice and I work in the Irará AFS as a monitor. I am an alumnus and facilitate in technical activities both inside and outside the school.  

The school aims to inspire citizens to question their context and seek solutions to their challenges.
We organise informative talks on day-to-day themes like desertification and other challenges that we encounter in the semiarid region.

In the evenings we have soirées during which we organise cultural activities with people from outside or from within the school. Each year, we prepare a seminar in which we debate rural education.

Teachers and students dedicate themselves jointly to projects such as The Regional Seed Bank, where we seek to strengthen the traditional cultivation of seeds, considered that there are many genetically modified seeds in the market.

We conduct visits to families in order to get acquainted with the students' lives. In this way we also get to know how the parents and the community see the AFS’s method of teaching. We also carry out exchange programmes to learn about the reality of the different places and people, and to gain new insights. The most important aspect of the training is the impact caused on the communities.

We clearly notice, in an admirable manner, the satisfaction of the entire community as they speak of the important role the school has in their lives. I supervise and guide the works within the methodology of Paulo Freire: OBSERVE, REFLECT, ACT.

Where they develop activities in the school jointly with the teachers and monitors.
They reflect within the community with their families 
They return to school to show their lived experiences.

Being an educator is to face challenges at every turn.