22/12/2017

OBMEP inspires and empowers teachers.

Cícero Rufino, de Alagoas: “A OBMEP transformou minhas abordagens em sala de aula”

Maria Botelho, from Minas Gerais, taught for over 30 years in the public school system, mostly at the Messias Pedreiro school in Uberlândia (MG), and won awards in every edition of the OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematics Olympiad for Public Schools) in which she participated.

From 2005 to 2014, he received 303 medals and honorable mentions. After retiring, he began leading a problem-solving group on Facebook and organizes classes and meetings between former and current high school students on Saturdays. "OBMEP made the school open the doors and windows of the classrooms, learning to value student-student, student-teacher, and student-parent-school interactions," he says.

Starting in 2012, motivated by the school's results, a business group in the city created the "Learning Marathon" project, offering scholarships so that students involved in the OBMEP (Brazilian Mathematical Olympiad for Public Schools) could stop working and dedicate themselves exclusively to school. Since then, the initiative has expanded to other schools in the region.

Created by IMPA in 2005 to encourage the study of mathematics and discover talent, OBMEP has contributed substantially to the teaching of the subject in the country. As I wrote last week , the impact of the Olympiad and its training programs on students has already been proven in studies, but its effect as an inspiration for teachers has received less attention.

And it is they, more often than not, who create and multiply successful initiatives throughout Brazil. I mentioned Antônio Amaral (Cocal dos Alves, Piauí) and Geraldo Amintas (Dores do Turvo, MG) here, and today I will tell the story of Maria Botelho and two other professors with equally remarkable contributions.

OBMEP was a "milestone" in Maria's career and made her "study and become more qualified." She needed to learn technology and create and adapt methodologies to serve both more advanced students and those with learning disabilities. "The opportunities I had minimized the strain of 40 weekly classes, the indignation with low salaries, my training deficiencies, the lack of professional development courses, and also masked the lack of better working conditions," she stated. "The ten years of experience with OBMEP make me defend the Olympiad as a pedagogical tool to be used with all students, in the classroom and in other learning environments."

The small municipality of Branquinha, with 10,586 inhabitants, is located in the Zona da Mata region of Alagoas, 60 km from Maceió, and has one of the worst HDI (Human Development Index) scores in Brazil, at 0.513. Until 2014, its 16 schools accumulated poor results in assessments such as Ideb, OBMEP, and Enem. Students took these tests "out of pure obligation, without any interest or expectation," according to teacher Cicero Rufino.

The situation changed radically in 2015, when Cicero launched the initiative "Developing and applying mathematics: a project aimed at producing winners in the OBMEP and raising the social indicators of the municipality of Branquinha," which I have already mentioned in this column. In that first year, there were already two awards; in 2016, eight more; and in 2017, the record was broken again: 3 medals and 7 honorable mentions.

"The effect of OBMEP on the school community has provided benefits that were previously unimaginable, even for me, who has always been a dreamer," says Cicero. "Among my colleagues, there is a consensus that OBMEP has awakened the municipality in general to learning. Parents are more present in the daily life of the school; teachers are increasingly committed to preparing students; and the children now have real reasons to study." He highlights the PIC (Scientific Initiation Program), which his medal-winning students participate in at the Federal University of Alagoas, with a scholarship of R$ 100, which also increases the family income of poor families.

"OBMEP transformed my classroom approach. Before, I followed a curriculum that simply didn't meet the students' needs. Today, I encourage students to think, reason, strategize, and define logical paths to arrive at solutions."

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