Concluding thoughts

Being able to see different realities and different contexts towards language teaching is
a rewarding experience. I have been working as a teacher ever since I was eighteen
years old – I worked in elementary paid schools, in two different extension courses at
the university I study at, and now in a language course – but nothing compares to
working at a public school in Brazil.

In the beginning of this course, I had to do a school research in a public school, and
chose do to it at a school that was near the language course I work at, Rafael Serravalle
State School is, with no doubt, a model for the rest of the other schools around the city.
Its reality, however, is also totally apart from the other schools in Salvador: since it is
located in a middle class neighborhood, and taken as a “punishment-school” – in which
rich teenagers go to if they do not behave well – the structure of the institution is way
better than in schools such as Thales de Azevedo, where my internship took place. Commented [c1]: delete extra space between words

Such difference opened my eyes: I have always known Thales de Azevedo State School
as a good reference for education, but I had never thought about structure and how it
could affect students. Rafael Serravalle State School is a good example on how public
schools should be, but Thales de Azevedo State School, to me, became an example on
how teachers should work as a team if they want to offer good education to students –
and some teachers also showed me how not to do it.

As I was mesmerized by Serravalle’s team and structure, I somehow thought that all
public schools could also provide their students good education. Of course, this is not
the reality of almost any schools in the city, and it took me a visit to Thales de Azevedo
State School’s classrooms to realize it.

Although the pedagogical sector of the school has a good team that actually cares about
students and organizes great projects along with the teachers, I could observe that not all
teachers seemed interested in having engaging activities for students. Such lack of
interest can be damaging for the self-esteem of both students and the other teachers in
the school. In my case, it was not motivating as an intern.

Before starting my supervised teaching period, I felt as if the work I was ready to do –
and had been doing for the past six years of my life – was not going to make much of a
difference, according to two of my three host teachers. Such feeling, however, went
away in the first class with the 1V7 group – I saw students having difficulty, students
trying to catch up with the subject, and students who could even speak the target
language fluently – they were just as my group in the paid school I have studied in.

Throughout my life, I have also heard about going to public school as a punishment.
Everybody I knew said such schools were terrible, the structure was mediocre and the
students were even worse. Ideologically speaking, of course, the tone of such speech
now is crystal clear: it is rather more about degrading public service, than an actual
analysis with a perspective of solutions of problems in those institutions.

I did not see such difficulties in PROFICI, of course, because structure, coordination
and motivation of the monitors were not a concern: the extension course is well
structured, and the students who are enrolled in the course want to or need it. Therefore,
students are either motivated, or work hard to be.

After the 1V7 group, there were three more groups that I taught, and both of them were
different: one had engaged students, but they had less interest in learning and more in
not failing, the second one had students that were the reason why I had heard all the bad
stories about public schools and the third was a mix of both: a group with few students,
and a lot of difficulties, but interest in learning.

Such groups have given me a widen perspective of what teaching in public schools is
really about: resilience. Being able to reinvent ourselves as teachers, adapting to all Commented [c2]: is really about

groups, as well as to lack of structure and, sometimes, lack of interest from students,
from the coordination and even ourselves is really a turning point for making a
difference in students’ lives.

Such experience has been enlightening, and makes me want to work in a public school
to do the same as the only teacher who told me to take a deep breath and do my best:
work to make a difference to students, and believe in them. I will also have to believe in
myself, and want to improve my knowledge and teaching strategies. I honestly thought
that this experience would make me hate working as a teacher, but it only had me want
to work even more, and in even more difficult scenarios to make a difference to those
who need.