Principal

For us, the principal of a school has a fundamental role in consolidating a vision of Christian education. 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; they are an example to students, teachers and parents. They are the model according to which the Christian faith-based school should see the world and reflect on learnings.

The principals are those who set the philosophical and Christian roots and they guide the ramifications of each school work. To do this, they choose the Pedagogical Model, the Mission and Visionthat will guide the school's Education Proposal.

The principal's office is the one that guides the entire school, aligned with the Christian worldview, focusing on achieving goals, ensuring literacy, making its students read and write fluently and developing their skills to acquire and retain academic knowledge, learning how to have a relationship with God, with others and with the world. 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. The pillar unifying knowledge is the belief that God created a universe with meaning. Thus, our education proposal affirms that all human beings need to know the truth of God and is based on the philosophy of Christian faith, on the Biblical principles and values and on the vision of the Reformers of the 16th Century, guiding the meaning of existence.

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

This means that we are neither socio-interactionist 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 with values and principles, to act in relation to other and the world based on academic knowledge and a theistic worldview.

In the words of two Christian authors, we understand that:

 “Christian education ... Comprises teaching all, from Sciences to Maths, from Literature to Art, within the structure of a Biblical and integrated worldview. It means to teach students to relate all academic disciplines to the truth of God and His self-revelation in the Scriptures while they detect and criticize affirmations from the non-Biblical worldview.”                                                             

                                                                                                         Colson& Piercey, And now how will we live?

In its institutional and legal structure, the Mackenzie Teaching System is responsible for:

• creating teaching materials and pedagogical resources aligned with the Christian worldview and with 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 we are not responsible for, in our current institutional or legal structuring, managing or determining aspects of the school's institutional life.

Regarding literacy, we use the Phonic Method and neuroscience notions, which were the themes of recent academic papers and whose efficiency has been evidenced. To know more about our literacy methodology, click here.

Today, our teaching materials are carefully prepared and monitored by a team of about 60 professionals who specialize in out pedagogical vision. In our commitment with this Christian worldview, we have been carrying out a large work to gather each discipline and segment specialist who write and review our materials to think on the subjects in alignment with official documents (LDBEN, PCN and BNCC) and according to the SME education proposal.

This is an extremely important issue for the Mackenzie Teaching Systems because we are systems both in the educational viewpoint and in the alignment of pedagogical practices. The books are the realization of our pedagogical model for the students’ reading and study, and they take into account the core curriculum set forth in law for each age and segment. This means that the teacher, together with the coordinators and the principal, is the one who plans 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 to develop a portal containing more and more resources to increase access of students and teachers to the object of knowledge and to the Christian worldview, in addition to an important regionalization resource of the materials, as each school and student may choose what better fits their needs. We have also made available in the portal a Diagnostic Assessment program and ENEM (National Secondary Education Exam) and Admission Exam Mock Exams.

For parents, we have also made available some material in the portal to help them think on 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.