When I arrived to Brazil, my essential question was how
does the structure of the Brazilian education system impact the teaching
profession? In general, I found that the status of the teaching
profession in Brazil struggles to rise due to low pay and challenging working
conditions. These obstacles are held in place by structures of time and space
that limit professional growth. This seems to be especially true for English
teachers.
I knew that I would be spending time in a language school in
my host city, but I did not understand what was really meant by language
school until our group visited a Centro Cultural Linguistico (CCL) in
Brasilia. Public language schools provide free supplementary language classes
to students. In Brazil, students attend their regular comprehensive schools in
the morning (7-12), afternoon (12-5), or evening (5-10). Those who extend their
language learning to a CCL will study English, Spanish, French, or Portuguese
in one of the three sessions in which they are not in school. They attend one
three-hour class or two ninety-minute classes per week. This would be a
revolutionary idea in the United States. Our society tends to resist learning
languages more than anywhere in the world. I found it so refreshing to be among
students and teachers who share my passion and sense of urgency for learning
how to communicate with people who speak a different language.
I spent eight days at a CCL in Teresina. There were
advantages and disadvantages to my placement. I was able to meet a large number
of students because they only came to class once a week. Every day I interacted
with two or three new groups of students. Unfortunately, it was difficult to
form strong bonds with the students when I only saw them for an hour. But I got
to know the teachers, especially the English teachers, very well. I was
disappointed that I was unable to spend time in comprehensive high schools in
Teresina. I had hoped to be able to compare my experiences between English
classes in language schools and in the high schools. If I were to start the
experience over again, I would insist on following the teachers to the
different schools in which they teach to develop a deeper understanding of the
differences between schools.
I was shocked to learn that most of the English teachers
that I met teach in three, four, or sometimes five different schools. This
occurs for a couple of reasons. First, the salaries are so low that teachers
need to combine jobs to make a living. Second, English is only offered once a
week in comprehensive schools, which does not add up to enough sections of
classes to create a full time position. And it certainly isn’t enough time for
students to learn a language. One impact of constantly moving around from
school to school, from early in the morning to late at night, is that no time
is left to collaborate with colleagues. English teachers in most of Brazil are
simply never grounded in a single building long enough to build professional
relationships and share ideas and resources with each other.
The challenges that English teachers in Brazil face in their
jobs were most clearly revealed on one of our last days in Teresina. Our host
teacher arranged a meeting with English teachers from all over the city. We met
in a school auditorium with about fifty teachers who do not teach in language
schools. We talked for two hours about the many challenges that English
teachers in Teresina face every day. They mentioned widespread student apathy
in English classes in the public schools. They said that students often prefer
to study Spanish because they feel that it is much more likely that they will
use it in their lives. (Students in the language schools choose to be there and
are thus much more self-motivated). They also complained about the low
quality of the government textbooks. They are forced to teach with a
grammar-focused approach. They know that this is not effective, but do not have
the resources or the needed professional development to change the curriculum.
(The language schools choose their own textbooks and teach with a communicative
approach).
The teachers we spoke with that morning were thirsty for
opportunities to improve their practice. New teachers receive no mentors and
there is not a system of evaluation in place that encourages professional
growth. I shared with them that many teachers in the United States share
similar frustrations with our education system. Mandated curriculum that
doesn’t meet the needs of students, minimal time to collaborate with
colleagues, ineffective evaluation systems that overemphasize standardized test
scores, and student apathy can be found across our country. In addition, in
both Brazil and the United States, if you ask high school students what they
want to be when they are older teaching is far from the top of the list. But,
there are some significant differences between the problems that teachers in
our two countries face. Teachers in the United States do not typically teach in
three or more schools. And while teacher salaries in the United States should
be higher, proportionally, we are much better off than Brazilian teachers.
