Alex abroad: A social program?

Bom dia,

Afternoon sun from the school

Things have been pretty tough here the last few weeks at the English school as we seem to be going down in student numbers and we have numerous problems with the building, with the land lord threatening to kick us out. As I have experienced life as an ESL teacher in several different places and different types of schools, I can say that quality of education we are providing is good, but there are other problems which are hard to surpass. The target audience for our classes are the low income earners of Bahia, but it is providing challenging to get the students to commit to classes and learning, as the attitude is very relaxed here, if students show up, they often come about an hour late, and student retention is extremely difficult as people give up. My observation would be that the education system here does not instil the mindset of personal development and opening opportunities for oneself, therefore it is very difficult to keep people interested in a long term commitment like learning a new language. That´s only an observation, the last thing I want to do here is try to make people think like I do, nor force my beliefs and way of thinking on a different culture, I only want to open the doors of opportunity to those who want it. Australia and other countries in the ´western world´ can definitely learn a thing or two about life from the people here too.

Pelourinho in the afternoon.

In light of all this, in the short term we have shifted our focus to offering classes to organisations like restaurants, governments, tourism organisations and cultural retail stores. We continue to run our classes in the school for those who want to come, but if we are kicked out, we need a sustainable form of continuing the school until we find another place and can teach the people we want to help.

Note: The following section expresses some of my opinions/impressions, I will state that these are only my opinions and are probably based on a lack of proper and solid information, so thus are rather just impressions from what I have seen.

Relocation of a people

A ´favela´ by the highway

Right now I am feeling fine in this city, the challenge is keeping me motivated, but I do admit that it is roller-coaster and it´s not all smiles and fun. Salvador is a big adjustment for me and time has a different rhythm here. I have definitely been seeing some interesting things and learning a lot. My colleague Renato is a photographer, and he was contracted by a program to take photos of many favelas in Salvador and correspondingly of government housing commissions. The governments plan is to destroy a lot of the favelas, because they are built on Government land, people just settle there and start building and before the government arrives there is a whole community and it´s too late to kick them out. However, in the Brazilian constitution it states that everybody has the right to proper housing, the Goverment is claiming that the favelas are not ´proper housing´ and they are building big uniform apartment buildings in which they are going to relocate people out of the favelas to. I don´t deny that the conditions in some favelas are not great, but I think other things could be done to work with the people to improve this, rather than kicking them out of their homes.

Another ´favela´

The ´solution´

We went inside several favelas, what I saw was a very beautiful people, living like a community, playing games on the street, elderly people playing chess and checkers, kids and music in the street, everyone with a smile on their face and people sharing with each other. All you hear about in the media is the violence, drugs and crime; these elements may be a part of it, but who´s to say that an a apartment building is going to change any of that. I don´t really like the solution, or I don´t really think it´s a solution, they are kicking people out of there homes and communities, and putting them in uniform housing where they will most likely lose the community aspect and keep the problems they have.

Community life

It seems they did the same thing about 20 years ago and you can see those buildings now, they look very run down and decrepit from what people have told me they are not a good place to live either. I believe that the governments solution is not developed with a long term focus, my impression is that they are trying to make this city look cleaner for the coming visitors of the world cup, and they want to use the land where the favelas are to build apartments and hotels for people with a lot of money. I am not against development, and definitely this city needs it, I just think it could be done a bit more carefully and working with the people, rather than giving them no option.

A community on the water, note the fishing boats.

More Government housing: Out of sight, out of mind?

Inside a community.

Can you help us?

We need material!

I mentioned in my last blog entry that there are some ways in which you can help us here in the school. One of my problems is I am spending all my time and efforts in trying to make the place work I haven´t had time to develop material for the school (which so far is non-existent). I would like to have our own material for classes, so anyone who would like to help can do so by sending us any of the following:

Audio files (Recorded by you or from another source)
Pictures (any pictures you own which you think we could use for class, and would be happy to ´lend´us)
Fun exercises you can find on the internet
Basic conversations (be creative and write a conversation for us which we can use in class!)
Material from the internet that we can adapt (please be sure to include a reference)

I would like our material to cover English situations for everyday life, to shift the focus away from grammar and more to the practical use of English. Some example situations could be:

Introductions, Greetings and Farewells
Ordering food
Offering a drink
Meeting with friends
Talking about colours
Talking about free time
Days of the week
Buying something
Talking about family members

The above are just some examples, feel free to be creative. If you are sending me material, please bear in mind that our students are beginners, so keep the language simple and clear! If you have any questions or are sending me material you can do so to my email alexander.rg.schmidt@gmail.com, or simply post it as a reply to my blog.