COLTEC, a school for change

Written by Daniel Nunes, Giovani Lacerda, Sabrina Santos and Vanessa Paiva

The COLTEC is one of the federal technical schools present in the state of Minas Gerais and one of the first places in the ranking of the best public schools in Brazil. With differentiated teaching and opportunities to the students, it has become a national prominence.

The Coltec offers exchanges for their students to Argentina and Sweden , also offers extensive courses , excellent technical education, as well as an extensive capacity for personal and professional development without dependencies. This year, for example, in May, students went to Sweden to spend a period of fifteen days to know the local culture, improve English proficiency and meet new people. After the Swedes came to the house of our students and tried the culinary delights of Minas and receptivity that every Brazilian has.

During the holiday period, some students of Spanish COLTEC had the opportunity to spend forty-five days in Cordoba, Argentina. And now, we, students of the college, are having the pleasure of living with Argentine students in our day -to- day.

Among these two groups we met, we realized behavioral and physical differences between them, the Swedes are tall, white and mostly made up of blond, straight hair and blue or light green eyes. They are more serious and observers, they do not interact much, in the case of the Argentineans what we could see is that they are more similar to Brazilians in behavior, most cheerful, outgoing and interactive, but among them there is little diversity as our people, but still does not reach the standards of the Swedes.

COLTEC under construction

        The differential COLTEC is that the student leaves the school has formed to work and at the same time prepared for an academic life. These two teams are extremely important because they are the object of desire of the vast majority of young people.

The school also helps train students for life as it is a space where people of different family situations, ethnicities and sexual orientations live side by side. Living with this "different" is that it allows many students to accept , respect and sympathize "with the other". This experience is of utmost importance, being one of the main reasons that put COLTEC as a reference school.

        This indirect method of school integration is that it allows, in most cases, a correction to occur in some concepts that are typical of Brazilian society, concepts that are late to the present day. This entire process, which has great incentive for teachers and school management is what makes the COLTEC has a unique and very innovative school project .