by Jeannette LaFors
On June 25th we had the great fortune to meet up with Luiz Paulo Ferraz, a history teacher who generously spent his day taking us to three schools and the Institute of Ricardo Brennand in Recife. The regular school term was not in session, so we didn’t get to see typical classes, but we still had a great day learning more about Brazil’s school system. We are grateful for all the educators and students who kindly allowed us to have a glimpse of their school experiences.
The first school we visited is a top-notch private K-12 school in Recife founded in 1979 by folks influenced by Brazil’s Paulo Freire – a founder of critical pedagogy who asserted that any learner can bring important experiences to the task of learning and co-create knowledge. Most of the students we saw were using the interim session to study for exams that they needed to pass in key subjects. And while we learned from Luiz Paulo that generally secondary teachers are pressed to prepare their students for the national exams and have little opportunity to engage their students in more critical thinking activities, he was glad that this school where he teaches two classes puts more emphasis on thoughtfully engaging students than doing test prep and keeps classes to a “reasonable” 35 students per class.
The school has very nice facilities and students in the high school have all of their books available to them on line. But a fact that blew my mind is that only a small portion of the teachers working at the school are full-time teachers there. This is commonplace in Brazil — more than 60% of teachers work at two schools or more, and they are poorly paid. Luiz Paulo shared his experience a few years ago of having 600 students across three different schools.
Our second school visit – to the Colégio de Aplicação – is what we’d call a university lab school. It is a public secondary school located on the campus of the federal university of Pernambuco in Recife, is the top public school in the state (based on test scores), and benefits from having university professors working with school. Unlike the first school we visited, over 90 percent of the faculty are contractually committed to working only at that school. And this allows the faculty to spend time with one another. In fact, they spend at least one meeting a week discussing and planning ways to improve the school. And they have opportunities to build strong relationships with one another, with their students, and with parents and other school staff members. In addition, teachers working there are eligible for federally-funded advancements.
And while the academic term was over, Matt, Luiz Paulo, and I caught a golden moment observing an “end-of-term” review. As in most Brazilian schools, students are taught in a cohort and teachers move from classroom to classroom. (Consider this means that all teachers have to bring their teaching materials to each class period they teach.) At this school, the students meet voluntarily with the school psychologist to prepare written comments that they read out to their teachers in a student/teacher forum known as the “conselho de classe” or “class council” when students evaluate the teachers and the class behavior in every teacher’s class. We spent an hour with one cohort, listening to what a few student representatives reported out for the group followed by teachers’ reflections about their teaching experiences with the students. While the student comments were mainly about their teachers’ strengths (e.g., “you are dynamic and keep our interests,” “you build strong relationships with us,” and “you allow us to debate current topics that we care about”) they included an occasional recommendation (e.g., “you should reduce the length of the texts we read in class”). After the students’ comments, each teacher took a turn sharing some comments about their experience with the cohort, commending them for their curiosity, their collaboration, their hard work, and good humor. Before the teachers went into a session when they discussed individual student strengths and weaknesses, Matt and I introduced ourselves and thanked them for allowing us the opportunity to sit in on their session.
Meanwhile Dylan and Adela were hanging out in the commons area initially entertaining themselves but then holding an informal interview with several curious students peppering them with questions about school, soccer, and their impressions of Brazil.
Most of Recife’s students, probably more than 70 percent, attend public schools — students from families who cannot afford to send their children to private schools. The third school we visited, Escola Matias de Albuquerque, is a high performing public K-6 school serving 500 low-income students in two sessions (morning and afternoon) and an evening adult school (from 6:30 – 10:00pm). We had the pleasure of meeting the director, Rivaldo Nascimento, a friend of Luiz Paulo who graciously toured us around the school and shared with us candidly some of the challenges he and his colleagues face in running a school. Many of the challenges are the same school leaders face in the U.S.: there is not enough time for principals to offer supports to teachers that will meaningfully help them grow in their practice, they face bureaucratic roadblocks when attempting to hire the best possible teacher candidates for open positions, they struggle to get an internet connection that can adequately serve the needs of the school, and they work hard to engage parents and community members in the school so both students and adults can benefit from academic supports.
But get this. Public school principals are elected by the teachers to serve in that role. On the one hand, it is great that school leaders are endorsed by the faculty; on the other hand, I wondered how responsible and motivated a principal is to take on any tough conversations necessary to improve the school. Given that teachers are not commonly employed at one school, the task of nurturing a professional community must be remarkably hard.
Space is tight at the school, and there is not much space for outdoor activity so students use a playground in a small park across the street from the school. And you can imagine that the five fans blowing to cool off 35+ students in a classroom might get pretty loud – there isn’t air conditioning despite temperatures that reach more than 85 degrees Fahrenheit. But the school has some valuable assets: a full kitchen staffed all day to ensure students in all three sessions have something to eat, a well-cared for common area for assemblies and performances, a modest computer lab with about seven functioning computers, and a faculty room with lockers, refrigerator and television where teachers can work, eat, or rest between classes.
Despite these challenges, this school counters the myth that poverty is a sentence for low academic achievement. Rivaldo shared his expectation that over 80 percent of the students from his school will graduate from high school – evidence of the high expectations that he and others have for students regardless of their socio-economic background.
While each of these schools differed in many ways from one another – three observations emerged clearly for me: 1) the resource discrepancies between schools are stark; 2) there are bright, committed adults working to ensure student achievement in each setting, and that can help to overcome the resource discrepancies in some cases; and 3) Brazil’s national futbol craze finds its way into the curriculum of every grade and subject.