Classroom updates - Justine

On Tuesday nights I am the assistant for Professor Elsa Monica English VII class. It is a large class of active and engaged students who are nearly fluent English speakers. I spent the first couple weeks mainly trying to get to know my students in order to determine how I could best serve them. Quickly I learned that nearly all of them are already teachers and most of them have more teaching experience than me. So I decided that, in addition to my language skills as a native speaker, I could offer my students more by introducing them to a topical current event in the US that they otherwise may not have encountered rather than instructing them on teaching strategies.

I decided to plan a series of activities that are both related to the grammar points taught by Professor Monica, and also connected to the theme of teacher organizing. I chose this topic because it is relevant since all the students share the common experience of being teachers. It gives them the opportunity to use authentic language that is applicable to their lives.

The first activity was a mind map to get students thinking about their experience as teachers and elicit the vocabulary they already know surrounding this topic. Second, I planned a reading using the “jigsaw method,” in which the class was split into groups and each group was assigned a segment of the reading for which they were responsible to read, summarize, and then present this information to the rest of the class. I chose a reading about the recent wave of teachers’ strikes in the US.

As each group presented, we made a chart that compared problems faced by teachers in the US to problems they face as teachers in Brazil. Then we discussed the differences and similarities between problems teachers in their respective countries. We also discussed their respectives routes to make change, and compared the extent of their successes. At the end of class, students completed a survey about their experience as teachers which I had prepared. Questions addressed topics such as their favorite and least favorite parts of teaching, and what they consider to be the biggest problems in the education system in Brazil. I used their answers to create a Jeopardy game activity for the following class. During this activity, students had to guess what they thought were their peers’ most common responses to the questions. Students learned a new classroom activity, and also reviewed the vocabulary we had previously discussed. The students got really into the game and I learned that they were very competitive.

All these activities led to a culminating class project. I gave students an imaginary (but realistic) scenario in which they pretend they are a group of teachers competing to win a bid from CAPES for funding for a special project intended to improve education in their community. They were given two choices for the project: they could either use the funding to pay for a native English speaker to work 40 hours a week in Brazil (similar to the Fulbright ETA program), or they could use the equivalent amount of money for any other project that they designed themselves. If they chose the first option, they needed to provide a schedule for the native speaker, specifying how they would spend their time and justifying how this would serve Brazilian students. If they chose the second option, they needed to create a budget outlining how they would spend the money and justify their cause.

On the day the students were to deliver their presentations class was cancelled due to the truck drivers’ strike. I am very excited to see their presentations in the following class, as well as to make connections between the topic and this very exciting moment in Brazil right now.

In addition to students improving their English language skills, my goal for the project is to foster some critical thinking for both myself and my students as to the role of American ETAs in Brazil. Perhaps due to the United States’ role as a global superpower, I often feel that I am deferred to as an assumed expert in all things. I hope this project can help students develop language that will aid them in finding an active voice through which they can speak confidently about their own experience and make demands for themselves and their students. I believe it is the necessary first step for teachers to develop this voice themselves if they ever hope for it to be passed on to their students who may one day be able to negotiate for themselves on an international scale.