Project for Indigenous Teacher Training

The primary objective of the Project for Indigenous Teacher Training is to establish a high-quality, culturally differentiated school in the Xingu Indigenous Park (PIX). Eventually, the school will be entirely directed and administered by the Xingu Indians themselves, with their own indigenous teachers and a solid curriculum based on their own distinctive culture. During the training period, the teachers are guided by a team of specialists and maintain constant dialogue with other members of their communities. They acquire the capacities for providing their pupils with an education that is bilingual or multilingual (in Portuguese and one or more of the indigenous languages in the PIX) and intercultural (learning about indigenous and non-indigenous societies).

In the village schools, the native teachers offer basic educational instruction to children and adolescents. This includes a critical perspective on the encompassing society, with the aim of enhancing the pupils’ knowledge and awareness so that the Xingu communities can exercise their citizenship rights and maintain their identity as culturally differentiated peoples. The Xingu leaders are worried about the children and adolescents in their communities, given the penetration of behavior patterns and consumer desires from the cities situated around the PIX. They also are anxious to see the younger generations get prepared to defend and administer the indigenous territory. Faced with the various social changes resulting from the contact situation, another major challenge for the native teachers and the ISA team is to help strengthen the dialogue between the elders and adolescents so that the latter will be motivated to participate in traditional activities: rituals, gardening, artisanry, and the like.

The indigenous teacher training activities are interconnected with other projects underway in the PIX, such as the Program for Training Indigenous Health Agents and Nursing Aides, sponsored by the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), and programs carried out by ISA in partnership with the Xingu Indigenous Territory Association (ATIX): the Project for Development of Sustainable Economic Alternatives, the Program for Training Indigenous Agents in Natural Resource Management, the Project for Capacity-building and Strengthening of Indigenous Associations, and the Borders Project..

Teaching Certificate Program

The Teaching Certificate Program was initiated in 1994. It is conducted in two stages, involving a month-long intensive course each semester for two years. The participants are divided into two groups: one has 44 participants who are training to receive their teaching certificates – recognized for the Education Secretary of the State fo Mato Grosso - and the other has 38 certified teachers who are receiving continuing training. The total of 81 indigenous teachers come from ethnic groups in the Xingu Park, as well as some from the Panará and Kaiabi. Besides the course held each semester, the teachers receive classroom accompaniment in the village schools. In total, there are 38 schools currently functioning, with 1,438 children and adolescents receiving instruction.

Since 2000, five indigenous teachers who received their certificates have been part of ISA’s training team as teaching assistants, giving classes to a group of apprentice teachers who entered the program midway and missed previous courses. The teaching assistants are learning how to train new teachers in the schools, especially in the larger villages, where the residents have asked for additional classes, requiring more instructors.

In 2001, based on their educational experience, reflections on their professional responsibility, and on the importance attached to the schools by the communities, the teachers completed a series of four courses that are part of the Pedagogical Political Project (PPP), designed specifically toward the realities of the culture to which they belong. The PPP was approved by the State Office of Education in Mato Grosso in 2002.

Producing their own materials

To encourage an interest in investigation that can add to the educational process, each indigenous teacher is expected to develop a research project every year on some topic related to his or her sociocultural reality. To accomplish this, they are guided during the intensive courses in the first stage of the training program, as well as during the phase of classroom accompaniment. The research findings are recorded in the indigenous language and/or Portuguese, and the texts are elaborated with illustrations. The results are then used as teaching aids in the schools and represent a source for developing instructional materials or research projects.

The indigenous teachers so far have been eager to record the traditional narratives and oral history of their peoples, information on rituals, songs, incantations, medicinal lore, body paintings and tattooing, histories of contact and land demarcation, artisanry, methods of obtaining food, knowledge about agriculture, wild fruits, fauna, forest and field resources, and the use and conservation of such resources.

During the intensive courses and classroom accompaniment, the teachers also develop instructional materials with guidance from the team of specialists. These materials, written in Portuguese and the native languages, fill in the lack of instructional materials designed for the cultural specificity of the Xingu schools. The texts elaborated by the teachers are initially photocopied for use in the village schools, and, after being tested in the classroom, are revised by the teachers and members of the ISA team for publication.

Education and Land Management Project

The indigenous schools in the Xingu Park play a significant role in the process of training communities to administer their own territory. The inhabitants of the PIX have been subject to increasing pressure from the growth of cities near their reservation and have witnessed the deterioration of their environment as a result of activities by non-Indians. These impacts include the accumulation of silt in the Xingu tributaries due to interference in their headwaters, which are located outside the PIX; deforestation and fires set by ranchers and loggers; the contamination of the rivers by agrotoxins used in planting soybeans and rice; and invasions by loggers, miners, hunters, and fishers. Besides these problems, contact with the encompassing society has been stimulating new consumer needs and desires among the population of the Xingu Park.

To solve these problems, the topic of land management has been chosen as the guiding theme of the teacher training process. All the subjects the indigenous teachers learn are presented in ways that demonstrate links to the use and preservation of natural resources, to non-predatory economic activities, and to relations with non-indigenous society, especially regarding modes of coping with the ranches, cities, colonization, and economic projects near the PIX.

Environmental education and health education run through all the subjects taught. The schools have the responsibility of training children and young people to know how to manage the lands and natural resources of the Xingu Park. This training involves reflecting on the current situation in the region, coming up with possible strategies for managing natural resources, and devising approaches to communicating with government agencies and people living near the PIX.