Showing posts with label Brasilia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brasilia. Show all posts
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Google Doodles for Brazil
Google has a number of Doodles specific to Brazil. I stumbled over some of them today. Here are a few of them.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Photo Links
All my photos are housed on Picasa. It occurs to me that I shared the links with my Facebook friends, but I haven't posted them here. Here are all my photo sets from Brazil.
Brasilia -- This album has miscellaneous scenic pictures from Brasilia
Public and Private in Brasilia - This link will take you to photos I shot in Elefante Branco and Marista
Pocos de Caldas - Non-school photos from the "homestay" portion of the trip
Sao Paulo - Photos taken on a the field trip we went on the first Saturday in Pocos.
Schools in Pocos de Caldas - Photos taken in the various public schools we visited.
Presentation to Pocos English Teachers - Shots taken during a professional development session for English teachers
Coffee and Wine, Minas Gerais - A journey into the hills outside Pocos
Brazil by iPhone - random shots from everywhere, many modified with Instagram or Pixlromatic
Brasilia -- This album has miscellaneous scenic pictures from Brasilia
Public and Private in Brasilia - This link will take you to photos I shot in Elefante Branco and Marista
Pocos de Caldas - Non-school photos from the "homestay" portion of the trip
Sao Paulo - Photos taken on a the field trip we went on the first Saturday in Pocos.
Schools in Pocos de Caldas - Photos taken in the various public schools we visited.
Presentation to Pocos English Teachers - Shots taken during a professional development session for English teachers
Coffee and Wine, Minas Gerais - A journey into the hills outside Pocos
Brazil by iPhone - random shots from everywhere, many modified with Instagram or Pixlromatic
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
M - I - Crooked Letter - Crooked Letter- I....
After lunch today, we came back to the Elefante Brancho campus to the CIEL language school. Here German, Spanish, French, and English are taught as foreign languages. We were there to give short presentations about some aspect of American culture to the English classes that were meeting in the evening.
We took our mandatory tour, listened to the welcome presentation, and it was all very good, but the whole time, my mind was on the students. This whole trip, more and more, my heart has been turning back to EFL and how much I loved doing it, how great it was to be an EFL teacher. I could not wait to be in the class and meet the students, to see what they were like, to watch them work with their target language.
We were ushered in pairs to our respective classes, and our group of students was fantastic. They were interactive. They were not afraid to ask questions. They laughed at and with us, which was to be expected and was a great relief. Nothing is worse than a class that doesn't laugh when I'm trying to be amusing. They were tolerant of technology glitches. It was great.
Just like teens everywhere, they were intensely curious about life in my country. I have never met a teenager who wasn't curious. This is what makes the problems we're having with education everywhere such a mystery to me. Teens want to know EVERY FREAKING THING. How can we get them to realize that school is the place to scratch that itch? How can we change what we are doing in schools to channel that natural need they have to know into a the beneficial need to know everything?
I could have stayed there with them for hours. I was having that much fun. Nothing energizes me faster than a responsive class. They had business to attend to, though, and we needed to get out of the way. We left, all bright and cheerful, chatty about our visits, happy as a flock of little teaching larks with our brief encounter. I don't know what they got out of it, but I hope they took something positive other than just hearing a native speaker talk. I hope in some way, even if it was only learning the childhood song I used for the title of this post about spelling Mississippi, some learning came from it. It would be unfair if all the good in the encounter was just on my side of the desk.
We took our mandatory tour, listened to the welcome presentation, and it was all very good, but the whole time, my mind was on the students. This whole trip, more and more, my heart has been turning back to EFL and how much I loved doing it, how great it was to be an EFL teacher. I could not wait to be in the class and meet the students, to see what they were like, to watch them work with their target language.
We were ushered in pairs to our respective classes, and our group of students was fantastic. They were interactive. They were not afraid to ask questions. They laughed at and with us, which was to be expected and was a great relief. Nothing is worse than a class that doesn't laugh when I'm trying to be amusing. They were tolerant of technology glitches. It was great.
Just like teens everywhere, they were intensely curious about life in my country. I have never met a teenager who wasn't curious. This is what makes the problems we're having with education everywhere such a mystery to me. Teens want to know EVERY FREAKING THING. How can we get them to realize that school is the place to scratch that itch? How can we change what we are doing in schools to channel that natural need they have to know into a the beneficial need to know everything?
I could have stayed there with them for hours. I was having that much fun. Nothing energizes me faster than a responsive class. They had business to attend to, though, and we needed to get out of the way. We left, all bright and cheerful, chatty about our visits, happy as a flock of little teaching larks with our brief encounter. I don't know what they got out of it, but I hope they took something positive other than just hearing a native speaker talk. I hope in some way, even if it was only learning the childhood song I used for the title of this post about spelling Mississippi, some learning came from it. It would be unfair if all the good in the encounter was just on my side of the desk.
Public/Private
Yesterday, we spent most of the day at Elefante Brancho, one of the best public schools in the city of Brasilia. We did classroom observations, talked with faculty and staff, interacted with the students, took a class tour, and even wound up in their auditorium in front of a packed house of teachers and students answering eager questions about everything from teacher salaries to how political our student organizations were. The students of Elefante Brancho (which does indeed mean White Elephant) were just like my own students back home, bright and intelligent, interested in their friends and popular music, in love with their cell phones. It felt so familiar despite the linguistic barrier.
The teachers were a little apologetic about their school. It was built a long time ago, and things here and there might have shown that. To me, though, coming from a school built in 1938, what I saw instead was how well they have taken what they have and made it attractive and student-centered. While they have security cameras in the halls for safety, they also have beautiful murals on the walls spray painted by students. Student art was everywhere: collage, paintings, drawings glued to doors. The students could feel real ownership. It was something that was theirs, not simply a facility they were passing through. They were also given time to decompress, breaks in which they were not herded from place to place, but rather given time to talk, use their cell phones, be more like adults. To me, this was reflected in their behavior.
Today, we visited the Marista high school, one of the two best private schools here in Brasilia. It was astounding. I have seen colleges with worse campuses. Everything was bright and clean, airy and well-kept. It was very obvious that money had been spent on its maintenance. Nothing was ornate or ostentatious, but the science labs were stocked with computers even we don't have. The teachers were happy, satisfied, had been competitive to get in, in fact. The students were engaged, active, curious about us. We talked with their student government leaders, visited with their lead teachers. Again and again, they spoke to us of the importance of building relationships with their students to ensure they could be academically successful.
Both the public and the private school teachers talked to us about the disparity between the experience teaching and attending a public school versus a private one. It came up again and again. Looking back through my pictures, although I can definitely see the differences in the facilities, when I look at the students and think about our experiences with them, all I can see, to be honest, are faces of bright young Brazilians who want to find the best for themselves and their country. That foundation of similarity is a strong thing to build upon no matter what school created it.
The teachers were a little apologetic about their school. It was built a long time ago, and things here and there might have shown that. To me, though, coming from a school built in 1938, what I saw instead was how well they have taken what they have and made it attractive and student-centered. While they have security cameras in the halls for safety, they also have beautiful murals on the walls spray painted by students. Student art was everywhere: collage, paintings, drawings glued to doors. The students could feel real ownership. It was something that was theirs, not simply a facility they were passing through. They were also given time to decompress, breaks in which they were not herded from place to place, but rather given time to talk, use their cell phones, be more like adults. To me, this was reflected in their behavior.
Today, we visited the Marista high school, one of the two best private schools here in Brasilia. It was astounding. I have seen colleges with worse campuses. Everything was bright and clean, airy and well-kept. It was very obvious that money had been spent on its maintenance. Nothing was ornate or ostentatious, but the science labs were stocked with computers even we don't have. The teachers were happy, satisfied, had been competitive to get in, in fact. The students were engaged, active, curious about us. We talked with their student government leaders, visited with their lead teachers. Again and again, they spoke to us of the importance of building relationships with their students to ensure they could be academically successful.
Both the public and the private school teachers talked to us about the disparity between the experience teaching and attending a public school versus a private one. It came up again and again. Looking back through my pictures, although I can definitely see the differences in the facilities, when I look at the students and think about our experiences with them, all I can see, to be honest, are faces of bright young Brazilians who want to find the best for themselves and their country. That foundation of similarity is a strong thing to build upon no matter what school created it.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
The Day in Review
Once we got our feet under us, we wandered around a bit. My friend Teri and I went to the Hippie Market and the TV Tower. The TV Tower is exactly what it says on the tin, a giant aerial that has an observation deck on it from which stunning views of the city are possible. We took lots of pictures, including shots of the currently-under-construction World Cup soccer stadium which is within stone's throwing distance of where we are just now. With the warm sunny day, the tower was quite the place to be. We looked over this incredibly well-thought-out city we're in for a long time, and then we went down to see what could be had in the Hippie Market that sprawled at the base.
The Hippie Market wasn't at all what I was expecting. It was a thousand times more organized. Everything in the world was in it, though. From gemstone items to rasta wear, somebody was making it or selling it. There were really big furniture, some awesome recycled things like chairs made from old tractor tires and purses from coke can tabs, and even owls crafted from various cones and seed pods. (No. No owls are coming home with me; I couldn't figure out how to get them back safely!)
I wound up buying a ring. I had left everything but my Claddagh at home, and I have been twisting my empty fingers looking for them. I decided to get something that would be both souvenir and take care of that issue. I found a gentleman who had lovely rings of many semiprecious stones, and I found a piece of amethyst large enough to knock somebody out with. We talked to each other in a mixture of languages and settled a price and he even sized it for my index finger while I waited. I haven't had that much fun since I was in Costa Rica.
After eating a largish lunch, we all piled on our little green tour bus and headed out on the town to see monuments, churches, an other sites of interest. The first place we stopped was the Santuario Dom Bosco. Only once or twice in my whole life have I been somewhere as beautiful. The whole building was stained glass panels, basically. It was like stepping into a living cube of blue light. You always hear about something being "breathtaking," but this place actually was. I could have sat for hours just watching the way the sun played with it. It was exquisite from every conceivable angle. The camera-happy among us just ran around like we were punch-drunk, clicking away trying to get all the glory we were seeing with our eyes preserved.
It didn't stop there. Everything we saw, while not as knock-you-down magnificent as Santuario Dom Bosco, was elegant of line, satisfying to the vision. It is modern but not in a way that gets in the way of its loveliness. This fits in with the tone of the city as a whole.
The city (although not the Santuario) is mostly the work of one architect, apparently, something that completely befuddles me. The architect of almost everything in Brasilia is Oscar Niemeyer who is, I think, 90 something and still going at it. His design sense is incredibly pleasing to me.
We saw the famous Catedral Municipal of Brasilia today, too, designed to look like a Crown of Thorns, a Cup, and the Host. The inside was even more amazing than the exterior, if that were possible. It was another confection of impossible spans of stained glass and sculpture. I could have sat in it forever.
Everywhere we went today, whether it was looking at the Superblocs of housing or just driving down the streets, we were surrounded by Niemeyer's dream for Brasilia. It is lovely. Even though I am exhausted, it has been a fantastic trip through this city.
The Hippie Market wasn't at all what I was expecting. It was a thousand times more organized. Everything in the world was in it, though. From gemstone items to rasta wear, somebody was making it or selling it. There were really big furniture, some awesome recycled things like chairs made from old tractor tires and purses from coke can tabs, and even owls crafted from various cones and seed pods. (No. No owls are coming home with me; I couldn't figure out how to get them back safely!)
I wound up buying a ring. I had left everything but my Claddagh at home, and I have been twisting my empty fingers looking for them. I decided to get something that would be both souvenir and take care of that issue. I found a gentleman who had lovely rings of many semiprecious stones, and I found a piece of amethyst large enough to knock somebody out with. We talked to each other in a mixture of languages and settled a price and he even sized it for my index finger while I waited. I haven't had that much fun since I was in Costa Rica.
It didn't stop there. Everything we saw, while not as knock-you-down magnificent as Santuario Dom Bosco, was elegant of line, satisfying to the vision. It is modern but not in a way that gets in the way of its loveliness. This fits in with the tone of the city as a whole.
The city (although not the Santuario) is mostly the work of one architect, apparently, something that completely befuddles me. The architect of almost everything in Brasilia is Oscar Niemeyer who is, I think, 90 something and still going at it. His design sense is incredibly pleasing to me.
Everywhere we went today, whether it was looking at the Superblocs of housing or just driving down the streets, we were surrounded by Niemeyer's dream for Brasilia. It is lovely. Even though I am exhausted, it has been a fantastic trip through this city.
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