How a school-wide project hones the skills needed for university applications

There are different ways to foster internationalisation in a national curriculum school. Beyond preparation for standardised tests, bilingual initiatives and projects designed to develop students’ abilities in another language, one possibility that is often overlooked is helping students develop competencies, habits and attitudes that can be especially important if they decide to study abroad.

With this in mind, our high school coordinator realised that a project already running at our school could serve a broader purpose. Projeto Artemis had been created to encourage students to take part in activities and initiatives outside school and keep a record of their progress.

But because many of the competencies it could help develop were closely related to preparing students to study abroad, responsibility for the project was transferred to the internationalisation department. We then redesigned it together, defining the rules, goals and requirements that would form the foundation of the new version. Since then, Artemis has become one of the pillars of our high school structure.

Project Artemis: what it involves

Each term, students receive a booklet in which they record what they have done during the term in different areas. This includes homework, essay-writing, participation in academic olympiads, tutoring sessions and study hall attendance, as well as activities outside school, such as language lessons and sports, and courses taken either online or face to face. Students can achieve the goals set for each activity either partially or completely, and are given a final score according to their performance.

The first pages of the booklet contain a “declaration of commitment”, which students and their parents or guardians are asked to sign. This section explains the rules of the project and, more importantly, presents the principles that guide it:

Autonomy: students act diligently to develop their self-organisation, self-management and responsible decision-making skills.

Academic growth: seeking excellence and mastering the content and competencies necessary for educational success.

Cultural enrichment through involvement in activities that broaden students’ world view and allow them to appreciate and value cultural diversity.

Personal development through efforts to develop interpersonal skills and pursue continuous growth as individuals.

Responsibility in practice

Because international application processes tend to require greater independence, the ability to meet deadlines and, in many cases, involvement in extracurricular activities, Artemis has become a way of integrating internationalisation into the broader educational development of our students.

One of the most challenging aspects of the project was putting the idea of responsibility into practice. For students to develop autonomy and self-management skills, the goals and deadlines established at the beginning of each term needed to be treated as firm commitments.

At the end of the first term, some students and parents questioned these rules and asked for changes that would allow them to improve their results. We decided to maintain the criteria that had been established from the beginning and explained the reasons behind this decision: changing the rules after the project cycle had ended would have undermined the very principles we were trying to develop. It would also have been unfair to the students who had made the effort to meet the deadlines and fulfil the requirements.

Before the start of the next term and the next Artemis cycle, we used the data and feedback from the first experience to make adjustments to the booklet and to the way the project was organised.

The end of the second term brought some of the same challenges. Once again, we followed the same process: we maintained the rules and goals already established, collected data, learned from the new experience and introduced further changes for the following term.

During the last term of the year, we began to notice a change in the way students dealt with the project. Gradually, they started anticipating difficulties and came to us for guidance before these difficulties became problems.

At the end of the year, we also noticed a change in the tone of the conversations we were having with students. They came to us to explain their situation, rather than to complain or to demand changes, and accepted our decisions, even when they did not agree with them.

We cannot attribute this change exclusively to Artemis but it was encouraging to see that students were becoming more aware of deadlines, consequences and, more importantly, the impact of their own decisions. This suggested that we were moving towards what we had hoped to achieve when we redesigned Artemis.

Reflective writing

In 2026, with the experience gained in 2025, we made further adjustments to the project, and it is running more smoothly than ever. One of the most significant changes has been the introduction of a reflective writing activity. This kind of personal writing is not something that high school students in Brazil are usually exposed to, since the writing component of our national and university entrance exams tends to focus on argumentative essays.

Reflective writing connects naturally with the personal development goals proposed by Artemis. It also has a direct link to international counselling, because students who apply to universities abroad might need to write personal statements or application essays. To do that effectively, they need to learn how to write about their experiences and values, and how these have shaped who they are.

Among the many takeaways from our experience with the project, I would like to highlight two important lessons. First, it is possible to look at structures that already exist in a school and to consider how they can be adapted to help students in their preparation for international education. Second, for students to develop autonomy, they need opportunities to make decisions, manage responsibilities, deal with consequences and reflect on their own progress.

The project is still evolving, and we continue to follow the same process after each cycle: we analyse the data and make adjustments. The fact that, at this point, the changes look more like fine-tuning than major revisions suggests we are heading in the right direction.