Presentations

In many of the schools we visited in Pocos, we were treated to presentations by the students.  The students had apparently been preparing for our arrival for quite some time, and one day at Integral, a private school, we had a third year class of students do PowerPoints, sing, and present.  One of the younger classes had dancers, girls who are taking classes and choreographing their own routines.  We watched some of middle school students learning dances for their Festa Junina.   Because of the rules of the school, I don't have any pictures from there.  They asked us not to shoot pictures, and we were respectful of that.

Later in the week, we went to David Compista, Rita's public school, and her classes gave us a day of presentations including songs, dances including the traditional forms and freestyle, information about Pocos and Brazil through PowerPoint, and in the night session, rap.  It was wonderful to see all the talents the students had to share with us.  Ali and I each filmed and took pictures as much as possible, and I'm still working on getting all the video off my Bloggie and processed.

I want to be able to show my students how much they have in common with the students I met in Brazil.  I think they will particularly love the rap and freestyle dancing although they will undoubtedly find all of it interesting.  To me, it just goes to reinforce the idea that there are beautiful similarities that exist as a baseline for communication between those students and my own.  Too often, I think my kids think of everybody else, and not necessarily just those in another nation or speakers of another language, as people they have no possible connection with.  When they see people playing the guitar with passion or rapping or dancing or whatever it is that they themselves enjoy doing, I hope they are going to have that precious "A-ha!" moment where they begin to see commonality and points of connection instead of barriers.

As soon as I conquer a few cross-account problems, I will get the videos up here.