16.09.2019

São Luiz do Paraitinga from all sides

The trip to São Luiz do Paraitinga offered 3rd graders (Y3) important elements to make connections with the Units of Inquiry worked with throughout the year. In “Matter matters,” the investigative method; in “Land Ahoy,” the surprise and strangeness in the face of a land and a culture that, for most students, was new; in “Cities,” a glimpse on the urban planning and its consequences and observing how cities develop. And finally, in “Natural Resources,” the certainty that life depends on natural resources and that our choices can impact the environment and the preservation of human species on the planet.

The city that was born as a crossing of a horseman who was searching, across the Paraitinga river, a place to rest and to repair what he needed, today is a place for geographic-historical-social-environment and cultural learning purposes. Thinking about the local geography and rethinking places of land occupation and exploration allowed the Luizenses – and each one of them who strolled there – not only to raise awareness about the spaces but also to reaffirm the local identity as a value to be preserved.

By introducing bandstands, churches, houses, markets, streets, fields, countries, and the river to students, the Luizenses refer to the past and give a new meaning to the exercise of remembering and listening. From active listening to sensitive listening, boys and girls experienced the poetry of books in the city routine of São Luiz and the interview, a journalistic genre, as an important resource of an oral story in the recovery of memory, an intangible property.

As can be seen, the 2010 flood, and everything that results from it, restored memory to its place as the matrix of History – an intangible heritage capable of establishing and materializing, in the present, an event from the past. For example, interventions in the natural landscape based on occupation, local reforestation, and management of  river sand.

As the boat went down the river,  students experienced the flood of 2010 guided by the memory of the Montana monitors who drove them downstream. The monitors pointed to house yards that vanished by the force of the water; then, to riversides to teach students how to recognize and preserve the riparian forest, while monitors were telling them how the soil on that New Year’s Eve was already saturated due to the constant rains of the previous year. Ahead, when dodging a pipe stuck in the river, they drew attention to the importance of replacing machinery for riverside strategies of removing sand from the river.

 The Y3 trip to São Luiz do Paraitinga provided students with the opportunity to visit historical sites, observe their cultural aspects, and also challenged them to think about strategies with less environmental impacts.