Cultural Diversity at Brasil Japão

This was my second week of classes at Brasil Japão.  I have two in the afternoon, one with 5th and 6th graders, and a second with 7th and 8th graders.

 Part of understanding diversity is identifying differences

These are by far my hardest classes to give.  For one thing, it’s just me in the classroom.  At CEU Butatã, I’m a guest lecturer that just steals the class from Rosana (the regular teacher) for one section during the week.  Usually Rosana will take roll, give me an introduction – it’s still her classroom and her rules.

At Brasil Japão, suddenly it’s my classroom and my rules.  Which is a little bit terrifying.  Last week was good becuase 1) Introductions are my favorite (everyone’s on their best behavior) and 2) we did cubes for the majority of class, so there was no worry about running out of time.  In fact we went way over time and I had to pack up the cubes to be completed at a later class period.

 We played Country Charades

This class on cultural diversity, for some reason, was really hard for me to

come up with a solid lesson plan.  As a teacher, it felt really disjointed,  and it was hard to fill the forty five minutes with things for my students to do.  In the second class, I felt like I was missing some giant chunk of the lesson – not helped by the fact that by the time I got to the end, I still had 10 minutes left over.

The kids in my class were really well behaved, but I worried that I was boring them, or not providing enough hands on interaction that was really opening up their mindsets to a new way of looking at things.  I wanted this class to be perfect, for each and everyone of my students to walk out of the classroom with new eyes to see the world, and I feel like that didn’t happen. I’m afraid that they didn’t really learn anything new.

Part of what makes Brasil Japão hard for me (at least for the day classes) is the fact that the classroom doesn’t have a black board.  As a visual person, I need to write things down to organize my thoughts.  Without a blackboard, I’m twice as likely to get lost halfway through the lesson.  I felt kind of lost the whole time without somewhere to record what I was trying to get across.  I’ve asked the administration for a board – they don’t have one available for me.  This class, I made do with the bookshelves and pieces of paper, and I’m on the hunt for flip chart paper for next week!

 

Classroom at Brasil Japão

Classroom set up for Diversidade Cultural

The second hardest thing about Brasil Japão are the other students at the school.  Only 40 kids were selected to participate in the EduAction program – those that their professors thought had the most open minds and interest in learning.  That leaves a lot of kids out, and curious about what’s going on.  In a perfect world, I’d love to have all of the kids in my class.  There were a few that sneaked in last week that weren’t invited to come back this week, that I really wanted to be in the classroom with me – they really did want to be there last week and genuinely seemed interested in what I had to say.  But I don’t want to encourage rule breaking by rewarding them with participation, so they had to stay in their own classes this week.  It’s difficult to sort out, at times, who should and should not be in the class, so I’m writing up a roll call list for next week based on who was present this week.

There’s also the issue of kids who aren’t in class who try to disrupt my classes during the day.  I had various kids opening the door and yelling obscenities into the classroom in the middle of a class period.  I’m not really sure what the best way is to deal with the ‘disrupters’ – I know that to an extent all they want is a reaction out of me.  And they’re awfully good at getting it.  I’m still trying to figure out the best way to deal with them – I want to show them compassion but I’m not sure if that’s really the best method of dealing with them.  I mentioned it to the school administrator – she says they’re an issue that all the teachers and their parents are aware of – basically these kids have no authority figures.  So I’m a bit at a loss of what to do.  If anyone has any suggestions on how to deal with disruptive kids (who aren’t part of the class), I’d love to hear them!

My night class was about 1000 times better.  This is my adult class, and at first I was really hesitant about how well my message would resonate with the students, but the students seemed really interested in what I had to say and

Night class at Brasil Japão

asked a lot of questions.  I wonder if part of the reason that the adult class was better than the kids classes was because I was more relaxed, and therefore took more time to explain concepts.  With the kids, I often find myself trying to rush through explanations of ideas, in an attempt to simplify the lessons to an understandable level, but I often end up being more confusing thatn clarifying, I think.  Goal: be as relaxed around my kids as I am with adults.

I’m looking forward to next week’s classes.  I’ve got Leadership at CEU Butatã, Entrepreneurship at Brasil-Japão, and my last week of Cultural Diversity at Ibrahim Nobre.