as a teacher, i’ve had some memorable classes. the first one i ever taught in, which was a 10th grade (1º contabilidade) near porto alegre, south brazil (year 2000). or one in 2001, also 10th grade (1º ensino médio), where i taught religion and english (six classes a week) – really memorable class! of course there was another class in a school in interlagos, são paulo, in the years 2004 and 2005. more recently, i’ve had the pleasure of teaching a math class for three semester at my current school, chapel (www.chapelschool.com). i will have a special entry on them nearer to their graduation, next june.
but today i would like to write about maybe the most extraordinary people that a class has ever put together. this year’s juniors at chapel, whom i got to know as sophomores last year, are one of the main reasons i really enjoy my job. i haven’t taught all of them, which is the reason why i won’t be mentioning all of them in this entry. but i am quite sure that if a knew those others better, i would have similar feelings towards them.
my first encounter with this class was in may of 2007. at the time, i was really hoping for a job at an international school. to fully understand what this class means to me, i am hoping for your patience to have a not-so-quick look at my career so far. you see, since i graduated in high school back in 1995, i knew that i wanted to work in a school environment. for that reason, i chose education as my first graduation, always planning to do two grad schools. during the first and more broad one i would figure out what i would do next: psychology, to further pursue a more guidance-oriented approach to what i wanted to do; history, in order to become a history teacher and teach something with passion, for i really enjoyed history. i might mention, as a side note, that this is the merit of my history teacher in germany, herr neubauer. and the third option was mathematics, which i had always loved totally independent of any teacher. actually, the other three teachers standing out in my “career” as a student taught subjects i never got excited about: frau germer in english, herr holzmann in french and rubens alegria in biology. after concluding my ba in education (1999), i decided to accept a job offer in a boarding school in south brazil, iacs. this was quite an important decision career wise. because i didn’t get a job offer based on my b.a., which allowed me to lead a school, be a guidance counselor or teach subjects like philosophy, psychology and sociology. i was asked to teach saxophone at their music school, besides teaching english in high school. so when i said yes, i was officially starting an unlimited search for my place in school; would i want to be a teacher, or a guidance counselor, or even pursue a career to one day be a school director, headmaster, superintendent.
from the first year on, they asked me to teach religion, too – the only actual part of the job where i was actually using anything included in my b.a.. in my third year there, i finally got to teach the before mentioned three humanistic subjects. this had a negative effect, though; i was starting to do too many different things: teaching six different subjects plus 20 saxophone students, while finally deciding to and actually studying math at the local private university (called faccat). and the choice of math was almost accidental: torn between math and psychology at the time, i chose math because it was on the program of said institution of education, while psychology only entered a semester later.
another choice i made at the end of 2003 was to leave iacs after four years of service. it was time to get more specific about what i was going to do. i did not want to teach english, my least favorite subject. so it was either trying a career as guidance counselor or being a math teacher, maybe even for life. so i accepted a job offer from são paulo to teach english, but only because i heard that there i might have a chance to move up after a few years, depending on my work. i decided to continue studying math, but at a slower pace. financial issues played a role, but i also wanted to be sure of what i would do by the time i concluded my math degree.
so i taught english in two schools, from 5th grade up to senior class. although i preferred teaching at the school in interlagos, the more decisive gig was in the alvorada school. my boss there (educational supervisor) really liked me and my work, and i soon told her that my dream was to be a guidance counselor. in brazilian schools, this is quite odd, because it is a job almost exclusively given to women. but i really wanted to try it out, to see if i would like it, before getting to final decisions about what i would do for a living, for the rest of my life.
not too long after that, nadia (this boss and friend of mine) moved up to coordinating all adventist schools in south são paulo (there were eighteen). by the time nadia called me in august of 2005, i had already ditched the alvorada school and was working reduced hours in interlagos; after all, teaching english was not what i wanted to do, although i still loved the classroom experience. the call was to ask me if i was still interested at a shot as a guidance counselor. i said yes. a week later, i went to her office, and she totally surprised me with her offer: i was to become the “orientador educacional” at the colégio ellen g white, the second largest, oldest and most traditional school of the southern são paulo district. and probably the most problematic. located in the suburb known as capão redondo, it is actually to big a school to jump into that kind of job for the first time. but none of the more experienced guidance counselors wanted to move there, in order for me to take a less demanding position at a smaller school. so it was that or nothing. i said yes and i never regretted it.
in fact, i really loved being a guidance counselor. of course it is something else to be in the administrative team of a school, but it is the personal contact to parents and students that really inspired me. tough job: more responsibility, 600 students and parents you should know, more hours, and incredibly enough, less money than as a teacher (who are paid by the hour in brazil, while the administration is paid a fixed monthly salary often inferior to what some more hard working teachers earn). and, yes, “only” four weeks of vacation a year, compared to double of that for teachers. but finally i was experiencing this new perspective, and i really had a passion for it.
but in the back of my head, there was always this other thing i wanted to try out at least once before deciding what to do with my professional life. i really wanted to experience what it would be like to work for a school that had the means to approximate the teaching experience to an ideal. smaller classes than the average of 35 i was used to, more technology, planning time, and why not mention the higher salary. i definitely had my eyes set on an experience in an international school. at the end of 2003, upon leaving the south of brazil for são paulo, i had two interviews at two different schools of that type. both were only a call in to get to know me, because none of them actually had vacancies for the next school year. but i was still honored to be called, an even taught two test classes in the international school of curitiba. i also visited st paul’s school in são paulo and was interviewed there.
i now knew that i enjoyed being a guidance counselor, but unfortunately i came to realize that it wouldn’t sustain me financially. another door was opening, though. i was seen as a future candidate for a school director position, and was also contemplated as a possible coordinator, a very similar job to the one my ex-boss nadia got. both of those would enable me to sustain myself, but i was very unsure at the prospect of being the head of a school; i didn’t think the job description really fit me, although people were telling me it did. and i didn’t like the idea of giving up too much of my private life in favor of the school, which would inevitably happen. and the position in an office, helping to oversee 18 schools, didn’t seem too appealing to me: too far away from parents and students, the main reason i was in the business for starters. so i decided to resign from my position as guidance counselor at the end of 2006 and focused my efforts to finish my degree in math and finding a job in an international school, the last thing i wanted to try and get a feel of. if it were able to combine the experience of teaching math and doing that in an international school, that would be just ideal to conclude my searching for a place in school.
for 2007, i came up with a little project which i hoped would sustain me during my attempt to get a job at an international school. but things weren’t working out, and for the first time, i felt the pressure. it was becoming a necessity to get a solid job soon, because money was very short, and i was still paying the bills for the math degree, on top of everything. so i was glad when st paul’s called me on the cell phone, inquiring if i would be open to a job offer to teach math. oh man, that was a dream. a real hope. a window for solution. they said they would call me a week later after sorting some things out for next year’s schedule. but when they called me, they said that there was no need for a new teacher after all, as they were able to fix the schedule. i was very disappointed. i mean, really disappointed. i have this thing where i never put my hopes up too much with this kind of stuff, in order to not get too disappointed.
at the end of that same week, a very good friend and cousin, kley feitosa, showed up in town. he had been living in the u.s. for almost a decade, and had just accepted an offer to teach physics in istanbul, turkey. i told him what had happened, and he asked me if i had sent my cv to chapel school. i had never heard of chapel school. he gave me the information, because he had talked to the superintendent in a job fair; they weren’t looking for physics, but they were looking for math. the next day, i sent them my cv, and was surprised to get an answer just a day later. very soon, i was interviewed, and we set a date for me to teach a class. but the offer had an “if” – they needed me to teach physics, too. i checked at my university if i had enough hours of physics in the course to be authorized by mec (brazilian education and culture ministry) to teach. luckily, i did. so i came in and met miss pat may, the head of the math department. she gave me some geometry material, and a weekend later, i was in classroom.
finally back to he class of 2010. because it was exactly part of that class that was in the room. i tried not to feel nervous, but i was. and it showed. it was not a good class. the high school vice principal, the superintendent, the ib coordinator and miss may were all there. and somehow, i had a really bad feeling. which only worsened after the post-interview, which ended with a “we’ll know by the end of may; if we don’t call you, please call us to know.”
another big disappointment, this one much bigger. because this time i had a chance, and i had a feeling that i blew that chance; and, even worse, it could’ve gone much better! i could’ve done so much better. i was down, and that does not happen very often to me. at this point, i should mention the great support i got from my then girlfriend flavia through these difficult times.
how i still got a positive fall in the beginning of june, i still don’t fully understand. but it was a blessing, and has been. what irony then to see that most of my students would be sophomores, some of them surely from that class, that day.
the next post will deal with those students individually. starting with the blond boy i talked to before teaching my “test” class that embarrassing early may day.
but today i would like to write about maybe the most extraordinary people that a class has ever put together. this year’s juniors at chapel, whom i got to know as sophomores last year, are one of the main reasons i really enjoy my job. i haven’t taught all of them, which is the reason why i won’t be mentioning all of them in this entry. but i am quite sure that if a knew those others better, i would have similar feelings towards them.
my first encounter with this class was in may of 2007. at the time, i was really hoping for a job at an international school. to fully understand what this class means to me, i am hoping for your patience to have a not-so-quick look at my career so far. you see, since i graduated in high school back in 1995, i knew that i wanted to work in a school environment. for that reason, i chose education as my first graduation, always planning to do two grad schools. during the first and more broad one i would figure out what i would do next: psychology, to further pursue a more guidance-oriented approach to what i wanted to do; history, in order to become a history teacher and teach something with passion, for i really enjoyed history. i might mention, as a side note, that this is the merit of my history teacher in germany, herr neubauer. and the third option was mathematics, which i had always loved totally independent of any teacher. actually, the other three teachers standing out in my “career” as a student taught subjects i never got excited about: frau germer in english, herr holzmann in french and rubens alegria in biology. after concluding my ba in education (1999), i decided to accept a job offer in a boarding school in south brazil, iacs. this was quite an important decision career wise. because i didn’t get a job offer based on my b.a., which allowed me to lead a school, be a guidance counselor or teach subjects like philosophy, psychology and sociology. i was asked to teach saxophone at their music school, besides teaching english in high school. so when i said yes, i was officially starting an unlimited search for my place in school; would i want to be a teacher, or a guidance counselor, or even pursue a career to one day be a school director, headmaster, superintendent.
from the first year on, they asked me to teach religion, too – the only actual part of the job where i was actually using anything included in my b.a.. in my third year there, i finally got to teach the before mentioned three humanistic subjects. this had a negative effect, though; i was starting to do too many different things: teaching six different subjects plus 20 saxophone students, while finally deciding to and actually studying math at the local private university (called faccat). and the choice of math was almost accidental: torn between math and psychology at the time, i chose math because it was on the program of said institution of education, while psychology only entered a semester later.
another choice i made at the end of 2003 was to leave iacs after four years of service. it was time to get more specific about what i was going to do. i did not want to teach english, my least favorite subject. so it was either trying a career as guidance counselor or being a math teacher, maybe even for life. so i accepted a job offer from são paulo to teach english, but only because i heard that there i might have a chance to move up after a few years, depending on my work. i decided to continue studying math, but at a slower pace. financial issues played a role, but i also wanted to be sure of what i would do by the time i concluded my math degree.
so i taught english in two schools, from 5th grade up to senior class. although i preferred teaching at the school in interlagos, the more decisive gig was in the alvorada school. my boss there (educational supervisor) really liked me and my work, and i soon told her that my dream was to be a guidance counselor. in brazilian schools, this is quite odd, because it is a job almost exclusively given to women. but i really wanted to try it out, to see if i would like it, before getting to final decisions about what i would do for a living, for the rest of my life.
not too long after that, nadia (this boss and friend of mine) moved up to coordinating all adventist schools in south são paulo (there were eighteen). by the time nadia called me in august of 2005, i had already ditched the alvorada school and was working reduced hours in interlagos; after all, teaching english was not what i wanted to do, although i still loved the classroom experience. the call was to ask me if i was still interested at a shot as a guidance counselor. i said yes. a week later, i went to her office, and she totally surprised me with her offer: i was to become the “orientador educacional” at the colégio ellen g white, the second largest, oldest and most traditional school of the southern são paulo district. and probably the most problematic. located in the suburb known as capão redondo, it is actually to big a school to jump into that kind of job for the first time. but none of the more experienced guidance counselors wanted to move there, in order for me to take a less demanding position at a smaller school. so it was that or nothing. i said yes and i never regretted it.
in fact, i really loved being a guidance counselor. of course it is something else to be in the administrative team of a school, but it is the personal contact to parents and students that really inspired me. tough job: more responsibility, 600 students and parents you should know, more hours, and incredibly enough, less money than as a teacher (who are paid by the hour in brazil, while the administration is paid a fixed monthly salary often inferior to what some more hard working teachers earn). and, yes, “only” four weeks of vacation a year, compared to double of that for teachers. but finally i was experiencing this new perspective, and i really had a passion for it.
but in the back of my head, there was always this other thing i wanted to try out at least once before deciding what to do with my professional life. i really wanted to experience what it would be like to work for a school that had the means to approximate the teaching experience to an ideal. smaller classes than the average of 35 i was used to, more technology, planning time, and why not mention the higher salary. i definitely had my eyes set on an experience in an international school. at the end of 2003, upon leaving the south of brazil for são paulo, i had two interviews at two different schools of that type. both were only a call in to get to know me, because none of them actually had vacancies for the next school year. but i was still honored to be called, an even taught two test classes in the international school of curitiba. i also visited st paul’s school in são paulo and was interviewed there.
i now knew that i enjoyed being a guidance counselor, but unfortunately i came to realize that it wouldn’t sustain me financially. another door was opening, though. i was seen as a future candidate for a school director position, and was also contemplated as a possible coordinator, a very similar job to the one my ex-boss nadia got. both of those would enable me to sustain myself, but i was very unsure at the prospect of being the head of a school; i didn’t think the job description really fit me, although people were telling me it did. and i didn’t like the idea of giving up too much of my private life in favor of the school, which would inevitably happen. and the position in an office, helping to oversee 18 schools, didn’t seem too appealing to me: too far away from parents and students, the main reason i was in the business for starters. so i decided to resign from my position as guidance counselor at the end of 2006 and focused my efforts to finish my degree in math and finding a job in an international school, the last thing i wanted to try and get a feel of. if it were able to combine the experience of teaching math and doing that in an international school, that would be just ideal to conclude my searching for a place in school.
for 2007, i came up with a little project which i hoped would sustain me during my attempt to get a job at an international school. but things weren’t working out, and for the first time, i felt the pressure. it was becoming a necessity to get a solid job soon, because money was very short, and i was still paying the bills for the math degree, on top of everything. so i was glad when st paul’s called me on the cell phone, inquiring if i would be open to a job offer to teach math. oh man, that was a dream. a real hope. a window for solution. they said they would call me a week later after sorting some things out for next year’s schedule. but when they called me, they said that there was no need for a new teacher after all, as they were able to fix the schedule. i was very disappointed. i mean, really disappointed. i have this thing where i never put my hopes up too much with this kind of stuff, in order to not get too disappointed.
at the end of that same week, a very good friend and cousin, kley feitosa, showed up in town. he had been living in the u.s. for almost a decade, and had just accepted an offer to teach physics in istanbul, turkey. i told him what had happened, and he asked me if i had sent my cv to chapel school. i had never heard of chapel school. he gave me the information, because he had talked to the superintendent in a job fair; they weren’t looking for physics, but they were looking for math. the next day, i sent them my cv, and was surprised to get an answer just a day later. very soon, i was interviewed, and we set a date for me to teach a class. but the offer had an “if” – they needed me to teach physics, too. i checked at my university if i had enough hours of physics in the course to be authorized by mec (brazilian education and culture ministry) to teach. luckily, i did. so i came in and met miss pat may, the head of the math department. she gave me some geometry material, and a weekend later, i was in classroom.
finally back to he class of 2010. because it was exactly part of that class that was in the room. i tried not to feel nervous, but i was. and it showed. it was not a good class. the high school vice principal, the superintendent, the ib coordinator and miss may were all there. and somehow, i had a really bad feeling. which only worsened after the post-interview, which ended with a “we’ll know by the end of may; if we don’t call you, please call us to know.”
another big disappointment, this one much bigger. because this time i had a chance, and i had a feeling that i blew that chance; and, even worse, it could’ve gone much better! i could’ve done so much better. i was down, and that does not happen very often to me. at this point, i should mention the great support i got from my then girlfriend flavia through these difficult times.
how i still got a positive fall in the beginning of june, i still don’t fully understand. but it was a blessing, and has been. what irony then to see that most of my students would be sophomores, some of them surely from that class, that day.
the next post will deal with those students individually. starting with the blond boy i talked to before teaching my “test” class that embarrassing early may day.
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