21 jul 2020

by | in #StaySafe

Friday, 6p.m., the deafening bell rang. Surely there had been meetings in which “the bell issue” had come to light, but there was never enough time to actually do something about it. The empty halls were taken by running bodies who dragged half-open backpacks and screamed as if they had been held captive for way longer than their eager little bodies could withstand. As they reached door, a trail of paper notes, candy wrappers and assorted colorful things was left behind. She grabbed her bag and closed the...

13 mar 2020

by | in Bilingual Education, Reflections about Education, Trends in ELT

Sunny afternoon in the capital of Brazil, a group of teachers awaits for the presentation of the new coursebooks. Curious eyes on the presenters, colorful boxes on the shelves and the expectation to end the day with grids and tables filled with content that would translate into a year’s worth of teaching. To their surprise, instead of handing them a book, the presenters, Pedagogical Coaches, as they are now called, give them Ipads and passwords to an LMS platform where they would have access to interactive books, planning guides...

13 set 2019

by | in Bilingual Education, Career, Classroom Experiences, Reflections about Education, Teacher Development

Year: 1999. Group: Basic 1. Place: Uberaba, MG – Brasil. Seventeen-year-old Ana Carolina stepped into a classroom for the first time. Young, restless, feeling entitled by her recently acquired C2 diploma and, most importantly: raw. Fluent, for sure. After one year of isolation from all Portuguese speakers in a cultural exchange program before cell phones or the Internet were even available, the mountaneer dialect flowed as if it were her own. Scared, she left the students in class in order to catch a breath and drink some water,...

15 ago 2019

by | in Bilingual Education, Classroom Experiences, Educational Technology, Teacher Development, Technology, Trends in ELT

Monday, 6 p.m., the sun peeking through the blinds in the brick and mortar language school building in Brazil. The teacher enters the room carrying a bag of props, flashcards, and her tape recorder. The recorder being to her as precious as a map to a Geography teacher: “Hi, John Peter! How are you today?” asked the teacher in a high-pitched voice. “I’m fine, thanks. And you?” replied the monotoned student. The automatic, “I’m fine, too,” followed. “So… Let’s begin! Open your books to page 50,” she continued while rewinding and...

17 jun 2019

by | in Bilingual Education

What do gunpowder, tobacco, and high-performance schools have in common? If we have the Great Wars of the 20th century as our backdrop, quite a lot. At the end of World War I, Germany was trying to cope with grave social problems. The owner of a cigarette company decided to fund a new school for his workers’ kids. Roughly thirty years later, the citizens of Italy found themselves dealing with the consequences of being in the losing side of World War II. Some families in the village of...

13 maio 2019

by | in Bilingual Education, Language Acquisition, Reflections about Education, Sin categoría, Vocabulary

Unit 3: Food. In the first exercise, the coursebook brings a set of pictures, each of them showing different food separated in groups. The image labeled with the letter “B” depicts bacon, a box of cereal, two doughnuts, a waffle, some pancakes, eggs, and a glass of orange juice. The instructions tell students to check the picture which contains breakfast food. Easy-peasy. However, they frown and take longer to do what is required from them than you had predicted in your lesson plan. In a short while, the...

14 abr 2019

by | in Bilingual Education

It’s a typical Saturday at the food court and the family in line in front of you is ready to order: the youngest one talks to her mom in fluent Spanish, the middle one talks on the phone in English and replies to his mom in Spanish, while the mom mixes Spanish with English in between her lines. The cashier looks puzzled while making a proud attempt to show off a few words he has learned here and there while watching Money Heist. The world is about to...