Wrapping up September
- hannahedull
- Oct 1, 2018
- 4 min read
Hello! I haven't updated my blog in several weeks, so I'm going to talk about some highlights from September and briefly talk about the projects I've been working on.
Conversation clubs- these have still been going well, except I'm down to 2-4 people coming to each one. I honestly think that it's just too long. It's hard to expect people to voluntarily come to something once a week for an entire school year. The people who do come, though, are very excited and make it fun. I really enjoyed the club where we talked about what literature is and what can be considered literature. I've also been teaching them card games such as Old Maid, Go Fish, Golf, and Kings in the Corner. They really like playing card games and it's easy to have conversations about anything while playing cards.
Teacher development course- this has also been going really well. We only have two more classes left. It's been a lot of fun getting to know some of the English teachers in the area and talking about Brazilian education. The teachers seem to enjoy the activities we have them do in the class and I'm excited for our next class this coming Saturday.
Class with Fernando- the first year students worked on giving a biographical presentation. They all did a really good job for the most part and it was fun learning more about my students. We will start a new unit this week I believe.
Class with Lauro- for the past few weeks, we have been giving the third year students time to work on their projects for the Spring Festival. I had them create a newspaper/tabloid that I think they had fun with that was displayed at the Spring Festival. We also talked about puns two weeks ago and that was a very fun class.
Lectures- Alexa and I gave a lecture about racism towards black Americans a few weeks ago. When people think about the US, this is one of the major things people see as a part of American culture. We talked about the history of slavery and a few movements such as Black Lives Matter in order to talk a little bit about racism. We only had an hour to talk about it, so we didn't get to cover much information at all, but we thought it was still important to talk about.
Other things-
~I have been helping Maraina with English classes and it's been a lot of fun.
~We had the Ministry of Education come to the University to renew their title as a university. They just made sure all of the projects the professors said they were doing actually were happening and that everything was still going well at the university. It was all in Portuguese, so I sat there for two hours understanding half of what was said, so it was pretty boring for me but very important for UNESPAR.
~I took my application out of the running to come back to Brazil next year. After a lot of thinking, I decided that it would be best for me to continue my future by moving back to the US. I plan on continuing master's classes and substitute teaching while looking for a job.
~This is a link to a newspaper article written about the English Day we had a few weeks ago at UNESPAR: https://m.tnonline.uol.com.br/noticias/apucarana/45,470045,31,08,alunos-do-ensino-medio-e-fundamental-participam-do-english-day-na-unespar?utm_source=tnonline_home&utm_medium=capa.
Spring Festival- to top this month off, we finished with the Spring Festival. Each year did a different presentation or sets of presentations. It started off with the 3rd year students hosting a talk show. They had a band that played between presentations. Alexa and I were invited on stage to talk about our time here in Brazil and then try some new foods in front of everyone. It was a lot of fun. The 3rd year students also put together some videos which were shown and then it was time for the second year students to present. Their class decided to do a timeline of English literature. They had five different short presentations- four were poems and one was a mashup of popular songs. They also played a few videos and then first year went on state. They showed a few videos such as a few parts of the show Friends that they had acted out and then they had Alexa and I come out to play in a game show. It is part of RuPaul's Drag Race where the contestants dress up as famous people and act like them during the game show. Alexa and I got to be the "normal" contestants and it was also a lot of fun. We ended the night by singing "Price Tag" all together on stage.
Along with being in a few presentations, I also put together an English wall. I had students send in a bunch of their works and any lyrics or poems they like in English. Juliane also printed out a bunch of pictures from events we did this year and previous Spring Festivals. We didn't have as much space as I thought, but I think it turned out okay.
That's all for September! Only seven weeks left to go before I'm home again. I'm still counting down even though I really enjoy being here in Brazil. It's hard being so far away from all of my family and friends, but it's been an amazing experience and I'm so glad I did it. Be looking for my next blog in a few weeks!
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