Once I was all settled in Rio, I posted something online about looking for a language exchange and got a message back from Gabriel, a Carioca (born & raised in Rio), asking if I wanted to volunteer, teaching English in a nearby favela. Perfect. I'd been wanting to learn more about life in the favelas since very early on in my time there (flashback to the night I met the adorable family on the beach during Carnaval) in order to later be able to help in some way. "Hell yeah!" I told him.
The classes were held every Saturday morning at Gabriel's house, way up high in the favela. He met me at the bottom of the hill that first day and introduced me to the other adults helping out: David, a hilarious and intelligent guy from Poland, who had been giving the classes alone with Gabriel for the entire past year, Naldinho, a Brazilian friend of Gabriel's who didn't speak English but always came to the classes to help (and still had plenty of work since a couple of the kids were too young to even write well in Portuguese yet), and Luise, a kind, bright teacher from Germany that hadn't been to the classes before yet, either.
We met at a park down below the favela (though it was the simplest park I'd ever seen and there were cops with huge guns standing just a short distance away, looking at us). We walked up a small but steep hill, with beautiful trees all around it and small shops and fruit stands on both sides of the street. There were people everywhere; kids playing in the street and adults sitting at plastic tables, talking, just outside the shops (Korean-style!). It reminded me of movies from the U.S. from back in the day when neighborhood communities were stronger and everyone spent time outside, kids running around playing and adults chatting, everyone laughing together.
From that point, we took a cable car (which transports people on one side and the week's garbage on the other so the smell was less than great) up to its third and final stop where we got out. We followed Gabriel up a seemingly unending number of steps going in slightly confusing directions. The houses were all very close together and we just seemed to keep going up. There was a small...creek, I suppose you could say...though I assume it was a water drainage system, running along the side of the small path we were following and it had quite a bit of trash in it. The path we followed only had room for one person at a time (or two if you were going very slowly). The higher we got, the more beautiful the view behind us got and, luckily, Gabriel's house was nice and high.
Sweating, we finally reached our destination and went inside the house that Gabriel and his mom so generously offer for these kids to come study each week. We climbed up one last steep set of stairs to the second floor (roof) of his house that had a few tables and chairs folded up, a white board and two markers, and some water that his mom had brought up for the kids. We took a few moments to take in the incredible view of the Copacabana beach down below and then waited for the kids to arrive.
Luise and I had been expecting to observe the classes that day and see how the system worked but it turned out there really wasn't any system in place. Neither of the two guys who'd been giving the classes was a native speaker or a teacher and, since I was, once I took the whiteboard marker, no one else seemed to want it back. It was a bit of an awkward class since I didn't know any of the five kids that were there, what they'd learned previously or what was intended for the class that day but it was fine.
The same group of us continued doing the classes for the next few months but, while the kids did learn some English, I honestly think it was more of a learning period for us than anything else. More kids came each week once they heard that there were two more teachers and that one was from a native-speaking country. Luise and I tested out different teaching methods and we slowly got to know the kids we were working with and what worked best for them.
By the time Luise had to leave the country (and I left shortly after), we had some pretty good ideas for how we could create a (hopefully) sustainable program. I wish that Luise were still there but unfortunately she's back in Germany. One of my many intentions for this year is to design some sort of curriculum for this program that can be used by any English speaker to help these kids learn. I've got some ideas up my sleeve but I'm sure it will be another great learning process.
I also know that teaching a small group of kids some English is very small compared to what could be done to get real access to a complete education to the countless people without it both in Brazil and the U.S. but I hope I can learn a lot more about this topic by doing these classes.
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Throughout our time there, random people would come in and out of our classes to "observe" and ask the kids strange questions. It was weird and disruptive but now we've found out why. There was a group of kids from a university in the U.S. who used this program as their final business project. They made a website for our friend Gabriel's company and changed its name to try to help him get off his feet. Below is a link to an article about Gabriel's projects which mentions these students. They came up with "solutions" to Gabriel's issues but I've seen the binder they put together and it was strange. It seems it was done to look like they'd transformed his program in order to get a good grade on their project. There is no curriculum in place for this program and no money is being put into this project by anyone other than Gabriel letting us use his house and him supplying us with a white board & markers, chairs, tables and water and the money that Naldinho found on the ground that he's donating to me to print and laminate the material I'm making for the kids.
^ This link is an article about Gabriel's projects and you can see pictures of the amazing view from Gabriel's house and some of our adorable kids.
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I've also spent time in a few other favelas but not for any type of work. I've gone on hikes, to parties and language exchanges, and just to spend time with friends. Seriously though, this blog post is way too long so I'm gonna leave it for now and come back to it another day!
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