When reading the essay by Seymour Papert, “The gears of my childhood” to the online article as the preface to a book Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas (Basic Books, New York, 1980), I couldn’t help reflecting on my own purpose and work with education.

For me, the story of the gears is also about finding the things that motivate me. I am passionate about finding ways to make it possible for my students to be protagonists of their own history by having contact with the kind of learning  that was engaging and meaningful about constructivism and also the lessons of Paulo Freire. So, when I started working with scrap robotics for children and young people from underprivileged communities, here in São Paulo, Brazil, I wanted to provide them with an education that considered creativity, problem solving, but that also  involved students.

 My purpose was to show them that the universe of programming and robotics was also for them. It was necessary to reinvent paths in education so that it could consider experimentation, doing, creativity and that we could  also find meaning in school through the maker movement.

When making an analogy with reading, I realize that the gears of the current education need to be revised and through the maker movement it was possible to do it, to give a new meaning to the areas of knowledge, to bring experimentation and playfulness to the teaching and learning process and on working with active and innovative methodologies to be able to give my students the perception of new meanings, to offer them new paths.

 That was possible, and the work brought solid results as  I played the role of a  teacher in the shoes of the learners and mediator of the process at the same time. Therefore, Not only did we find paths, but we have also created a new teaching methodology that today has been  transformed in a public policy that impacts 2.5 million students and that has solid outcomes as the creation of the São Paulo Basic Education Innovation Center.