Principal

For us, the principal of a school plays an important role in consolidating educational vision. The Principal's Office should not be associated only with a place where students go to be told off.

Principals act inside and outside the school. They are a psychopedagogical, administrative and political reference; An example to students, teachers and parents. They are a model according to which the school should see the world and reflect on learning.

The principals are those who establish the philosophical roots, and they guide the ramifications of all school work. To do this, they select the Pedagogical Model, the Mission and Vision that will guide the school's Education Proposal.

The principal's office guides the entire school, focusing on achieving goals, ensuring literacy, making its students read and write fluently and developing their skills to acquire and retain academic knowledge. For each of these goals, principals adopt different methods with their teams.

According to the vision of the Mackenzie Teaching Systems, people should understand life in all its complexity and entirety: will the sun really rise tomorrow? How can you be sure of that? Why does the body get sick? Why is it healed? Why do people lie? Why do they speak the truth?

We believe that each of these questions, and many others, has only one answer. And finding this one answer is the reason why we teach and learn. Thus, our educational proposal understands that all human beings yearn after Truth. This is our Educational Philosophy which underpins our proposal of valuing education.

The search for Truth assumes a non-materialistic view of the world. Therefore, we do not believe that human beings build knowledge, but that they acquire knowledge and build understanding.

This means that we are neither socio-interactionists nor constructivists. Our Pedagogical Model is cognitive-interactionist.

With this philosophy, this Theory and this Pedagogical Model, we have our Education Proposal: to provide students with the development of their learning skills and to seek the Truth and act in relation to others and the world based on academic knowledge and a theistic worldview.

Our aim is to promote education that encourages a culture in which:

• we discover Truth;

• we are faithful and committed to the Truth;

• everything we do, we do with excellence;

• we live to serve each other.

In their legal and institutional structures, the Mackenzie Teaching Systems are responsible for:

• creating teaching materials and pedagogical resources that support the pedagogical proposal of the Systems;

• offering to partner schools training for teachers and pedagogical consulting with our Education Proposal.

It is important to note that in our current institutional or legal structuring, we are not responsible for managing or determining aspects of the school's institutional life.

Regarding literacy, we use the Phonic Method and neuroscience notions, which have been the topics of recent academic papers and the effectiveness of which has been evidenced. To find out more about our literacy methodology, click here.

Today, our teaching materials are carefully prepared and monitored by a team of around 60 professionals who specialize in our pedagogical vision. In our commitment to this vision, we have carried out large-scale study bringing together the specialists in each discipline and area who write and review our materials, to think about the subjects in alignment with official documents (LDBEN - Guidelines and Bases of National Education Law, PCN - National Curricular Parameters and BNCC - National Common Curricular Base) and according to the Systems’ educational proposal.

This is an extremely important issue for the Mackenzie Teaching Systems because we are systems both from the educational viewpoint and in the alignment of pedagogical practices. The books are the realization of our pedagogical model for the students to read and study, and they take into account the core curriculum set forth in law for each age group and segment. This means that the teacher, together with the coordinators and the principal, is the one who plans the teaching sequences. Thus, we do not use the booklet system.

We understand the importance of different media in the teaching-learning process, and we have worked hard to develop a portal containing an increasing amount of resources to increase students’ and teachers’ access to the object of knowledge, as well as being an important regionalization resource of the materials, as each school and student may choose what best fits their needs. We have also made available in the portal a Diagnostic Assessment program and Mock Exams for the ENEM (National Secondary Education Exam) and Admission Exam.

For parents, we have also made available some material in the portal to help them think about issues related to their children's education.

For the school community as a whole, we have the Systems magazines, monthly bulletins sent by email and a Facebook page with pedagogical topics.