Silvia Maria Pereira de Carvalho, Crecheplan's founder, believes that teachers and children need access to things of beauty in order to discover the complexity of what it means to be human. For far too long, she says, childcare workers have been overlooked by the Brazilian educational system, surviving "by the skin of their teeth". In response to this situation, she has helped to redefine early education in Brazil from an emergency chore into a comprehensive system of education. Her work transforms day care centers from "dumping places" for poor children to respectable institutions staffed not by mere care givers, but by professionals working with and respecting both the families and children.

Silvia, a petite 50-year-old woman with piercing eyes and a look of determination, began her work in 1982, in a government-led movement to improve the quality of care that young children were receiving in Sao Paulo. After majoring in history she earned a second degree in social services, and her first visits to the 25 government-funded daycare centers she had been assigned to supervise were eye-opening. The decrepit conditions of the buildings, lack of materials, and overall lack of care for the children shocked her.

Hours of Inactivity

For example, it took hours to serve meals. She describes how children would sit for long periods in between the serving of the food and clean up. Sometimes there would be up to four hours of inactivity. Children would spend between ten and twelve hours in daycare since their mothers, usually domestic workers, traveled by public transport two hours each way to work in wealthy neighborhoods. The women who ran such creches were usually mothers themselves with little or no schooling.

In contrast, middle and upper class Brazilian families have always been able to afford satisfactory daycare options. At the least, a middle class daycare center will provide clean and safe buildings, healthy meals and nutritional snacks, high quality and age appropriate books, and most importantly, educated teachers. Monthly tuition for decent daycare ranges today from $300 to $2,000 dollars a month, a cost inaccessible to those earning the legal minimum wage of $130 a month, a glaring example of Brazil's economic reality and unequal distribution of wealth.

The New Brazilian Constitution of 1988 made education a right for children from birth to six. Before the Constitution, daycare was part of welfare services' response to the social problems of the era. The economic recession of the 1970s gave rise to growing numbers of working mothers, staggering infant mortality rates, and increased child abandonment. The children, too, were surviving by the skin of their teeth. The state's philosophy of early childhood needs remained clinical and medical. After the New Constitution, teachers of early childhood education gained legitamacy and the needs of young children received priority.

Silvia's goals included professionalizing the field, not only in the political and institutional arenas, but also the pedagogical approach to teaching young children. She was dismayed by the daily problems in the twenty-five municipal daycare centers that she was responsible for in late 80s and early 90s, problems of high absenteeism among teachers, and parent-staff conflicts, but she was most disturbed by the misery of children who suffered from poor nutrition and a lack of social and intellectual stimulation.

From Mother Substitute to Professional Educator

So Silvia crafted an alternative approach to transform the consciousness of all those attending to the needs of the child but the process was not easy. Often she confronted resistance from staff, who generally saw themselves as, and acted like, caregivers. She also encountered resentful parents who felt blamed for their poverty and inability to adequately care for their children's basic needs. She responded by redefining the staff's role into that of professional educators. The new approach included discussions among staff, curriculum development, time for reflection and breaking up the teacher's traditional 10-12 hour workday into six-hour shifts and decentralizing each creche's teaching staff.

Teachers no longer were allocated a set group of children, a practice which encouraged "mothering" but taught specific subjects such as math or music. This strategy allowed children to move from interest room to interest room, each supplied with its own staff and an appropriate set of toys, art, and related materials. Silvia cites the theories of 20th century educational philosophers Vygotsky and Piaget as the underpinnings for this model. Their theories advance the idea that children learn by relating new information to what they already know, to what is familiar and what interests them. The educator's role is to help the child make connections between their prior knowledge and the new information that is being presented. The educator must be able to discern the child's level of development and teach just above that level in order for the child to stretch. The teacher acts as a facilitator who moves the child to the next level of thinking and learning. This contrasts with the "empty vessel" idea that teachers hold all the knowledge and need to pour it into their students.

Launching Crecheplan

Having proved that their innovations worked in model centers, Crecheplan consolidated as an organization in 1986. At this moment, Silvia was elected a Fellow by Ashoka, the global association of social entrepreneurs. Ashoka, based in the United States, seeks out and supports the innovative people behind plans that find solutions to society's large-scale problems. Silvia received a three-year stipend for her everyday personal expenses; this Fellowship freed her to concentrate her efforts on Crecheplan full time. She sees her membership in Ashoka as key to her development; "I received the support needed at the very moment that I was about to take off with Crecheplan."

Crecheplan launched free assistance programs for community-managed day care centers. Four Crecheplan representatives went to work for two years on-site in each creche that needed re-structuring. Taking into account the "whole child" and not just his or her specifically academic needs, the consulting group observed and worked with the entire creche staff including teachers, coordinators, directors, cooks and maintenance workers. The Crecheplan team helped the creche personnel design curriculum around popular cultural themes like Brazilian festivals, for example, to reinforce literacy through music. Kids read song lyrics and see them posted on the walls. When they connect the words they are looking at every day to the tunes they are practicing, reading occurs more naturally and in their own cultural context.

Just as critical as re-vamping curriculum design and enhancing teachers' repertoire of instructional activities were the more concrete strategies of developing a practical physical layout and basing nutritional seasonal menus upon the availability of locally grown crops. Crecheplan's three-pronged approach involved teaching practical skills, a theoretical basis for early childhood education, and a process of self-reflection of practice.

Reflecting on What Works

Silvia cites the practice of self-reflection as the ingredient that won over the teachers (who admitted that they were not thrilled about the idea of yet more boring staff development) and allowed the intervention and consulting program to be so successful. The space, incentive, time, and means for educators to reflect on their practice has been central to the Crecheplan model.

Silvia describes the atmosphere before Crecheplan as one where the teachers worked mechanically and without objectives. Crecheplan brought rich ideas to the teachers which they in turn were able to successfully implement in the creche. When teachers saw the positive impact of their work with the children, they felt enormous pride and resolved to carry on with renewed energy, decreasing the teacher dropout and turnover rate. Furthermore, the process of self-reflection became a vehicle for collaboration between teachers. Teachers learned to discuss problems with colleagues and brainstorm solutions, exchange ideas and combat the isolation they often felt. The self-reflection process aided in the development of a congenial climate and camaraderie between teachers grew.

No Longer Boring

Silvia's colleague Regina Scarpa is the Instructors Coordinator at Crecheplan. In 1998, she based her master's thesis on their work and published it with the title, "It Used to be This Way, But Not Anymore: One Proposal for the Education of Under-educated Teachers." She identifies an historical problem in teacher education with a single adjective: boring. Staff development courses, usually lecture-based and non-participatory, lock teachers in their seats for hours of note-taking. To compound the problem, professors often regard early childhood educators and care providers with contempt because of their low level of formal academic schooling.

Self-reflective practices, on the other hand, are inherently relevant to a teacher's life. By knowing more about why and how she teaches what she does, how she feels about her classroom, the challenges which confront her daily, an educator can self-evaluate and open herself to improvement. Crecheplan encourages "child-centered" teaching and "teacher-centered" continuing adult education, resulting in students at all age levels who care about what they are learning. After the first two years of on-site development, Crecheplan's contact with each crech becomes less frequent, more informal, but the creches have been asking for further assistance and continuation of Crecheplan's coaching, an indicator of the success of their program.

The response from parents has also been extremely positive. Silvia relates that parents have been impressed and more concerned with their children's learning since she began. Some have attempted to complement the creche's teaching in the home by renting educational and cultural videos such as ballet performances. The parents and teachers have a better relationship and parents feel welcome to participate in creche activities. Silvia holds teachers in high esteem and realizes the importance of teachers feeling validated in their work and viewing it as an attractive career choice. "A lot has to do with how teachers conceive of themselves," she says thoughtfully. "Teachers who don't hold their profession in high esteem, who feel as though they are extra, disposable, unqualified - why would they want to make themselves into better teachers?" she asks.

Honoring Teaching Successes

Crecheplan seeks to repair the damage done. Funded since 1994 by private companies such as the C&A Institute, (one of Brazil's largest department stores with locations worldwide), the Abrassol Creditcard Institute and the Vitae Foundation, it has honored teachers by taking them to conferences and exhibiting their successes. As they began to see their role as professional educators, many returned to school themselves. Silvia likes to tell a story to illustrate the impact of Crecheplan in Osasco, an industrial city in greater Sao Paulo, where she began to work in 1994. A number of women were operating creches in their homes, an illegal, yet common practice. "The providers had no rights in this situation. They are paid very little and work very hard. When we first met with these women, there were three formal creches and tons of home based childcare. Today, after participating in our courses, there are ten official day care centers. More importantly, the women have gotten together and have formed their own organization called 'Women for Education'." This organization advocates for the educators' rights as workers. She further describes that as providers felt more professionalized and valued they sought new ways to confront daily problems and became more innovative in their approaches to teaching. "Recently, this group hosted an exposition of their children's art in a shopping center in Osasco. The art was wonderful, very high quality." Through Crecheplan, the teachers expanded the horizons of their students and now can take pride in the results. They have documented the advances of their students in portfolio fashion and identified their students' improvements in the areas of speech, written and artistic expression, and thinking skills. The magazine "Por Um Triz" ("By the Skin of Our Teeth") uses art, music and literature to expand the cultural awareness of both teachers and children.

Oversized, glossy pages with luscious colors and bold type frame the teacher- designed lesson plans and their success stories. Often short biographies are provided about the artists and musicians who are incorporated into the lessons and their artwork and lyrics are reproduced. The teachers use verses from popular Brazilian songs familiar to the children and use them as a stepping stone for lessons in both music and reading.

Crecheplan and Its Journal Branch Out

The magazine has been a vehicle to circulate ideas and educational practices like musical literacy not only among the direct participants of the Crecheplan project, but also to public schools, the Ministry of Education, museums, and cultural institutions. In March of this year, Crecheplan will launch a new educational journal modeled on the journal of the National Association for the Education of Young Children based in Washington, D.C., with which Crecheplan is affiliated. The journal will be published four times a year and have an initial subscription of 2,000. Silvia enthusiastically describes her work and the evolution of Crecheplan, now in its twelfth year of operation.

"I never envisioned that my work would have such a widespread impact, but as our strength increases, my dreams grow larger also," she says. As part of a larger umbrella organization, Cooperapic, "Por Um Triz" is distributed to approximately 100 organizations, which serve over 23,000 children in the Sao Paulo area.

Silvia's voice brims with enthusiasm, "Up to the present, Crecheplan has served 5,000 children directly, but I can't even begin to count how many teachers have benefited from our conferences or, even more, from the legislation which has brought infant education into the public spotlight as a priority for the next generation."

There is no turning back for early childhood education in Brazil.

Carvalho would love to set up a website describing the work of Crecheplan. She would like to exchange ideas and experiences with people in other countries, particularly in Spain, Argentina and the United States. Her project needs access to current literature and up-to-date materials, preferably in Portuguese and English.

Silvia Carvalho
Crecheplan
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Phone/fax: 55-11-210-5411
Email: crechepl@uol.com.br