From being the "nightmare park" to becoming the best school in the world

BarcelonaWhen Regis Marques arrived at the school he now directs a decade ago, the nickname by which it was known said it all: "It was the Nightmare Park," recalls the Brazilian teacher. "Inside the school there was drugs, a lot of violence, and a degradation that, having been inaugurated in 2013, made no sense. They were robbed once a week and in three years everything had been destroyed," he recalls.

The school, located in Cubatão, São Paulo, is actually called Parque dos Sonhos [Dream Park, in Portuguese] and, despite being a four-story building, it only had about a hundred students. Ten years later, the educational center has almost 1,200 students and has been awarded as the best school in the world in the category of overcoming adversity at the World's Best School Prizes. Marques, who visited Barcelona for the Mutare Educació conference of the Carulla Foundation, explains how the process of reviving Dream Park was.

"It was a job of recovering everyone's self-esteem," admits the director. He explains that the first thing he did was convince the teachers, parents, and even the students that change was possible. "They asked me: 'With the violence there is, how do you want this to become a place of peace?' I told them I didn't know, but that we would work to achieve it,'" he details. 80% of the students didn't even know how to read or write, and the management team set a five-year goal to reverse this.

"The third thing we did was listen. Ask students and teachers what they wanted us to do to make the school a good place," continues Marques. From there, they began to organize workshops in computer science, theater, dance, and hairdressing – which was what the students had requested the most – and, in parallel, they went to ask for funding from companies and institutions to improve the facilities. "We managed to get Itaú bank [the largest in Brazil] to donate $25,000 to the school," Marques proudly states. "The goal was to make the students feel that it was their home, because you take care of and respect your home," he insists.

A coffee with the director

Regarding academic results, Marques admits that they are "still" recovering the level of many students, but argues that the school's learning results "have improved by 40%". At this point, the teachers' confidence in the project has been key, and the director was clear that the only way to convince them that improvement was possible was by "rolling up his sleeves". "If you see that the person next to you has managed to make a student change, you will also get involved," assures the director. To work on cohesion with his teachers, Marques decided to reserve an hour each day to talk to one of them. "We called it a coffee with the director, and basically I would ask them to tell me everything they wanted, that during that hour I was totally available for them," he recalls.

It was also encouraged that teachers actively listen to families. "At first I spoke with all the parents, but with 1,200 students it is unsustainable. Now there are other people in the center who are approaching them," admits the director.

After ten years at the helm of Parque dos Sonhos, Marques's main mission now is to find a good successor. "In the next three years we want to finish shaping the project, and then I want to work on training another person to take my place from December 31, 2032," says the director. He also assures that the next step is to be mayor, and that in the future he wants to be the Minister of Education of Brazil. "I want to change the world," he states enthusiastically.