Teaching English was starting to become a really enlightening experience for me, especially when I had the chance to move on. After landing a job AT INEP in the beginning of January 2014. I started to mold myself into a different person. When I first started I still had many issues to work out. First being on time and secondly being more organized. INEP was the first place where I started to realized what it meant to be a professional. Showing to work on time. Dressing professionally. Time management. Most importantly structure. I started to teach in the mornings and in the evenings. Most of my hours were based from 8-12 and then in the evening from 4-8. Many of my students were a mixture of children and adults. The children for me was the most difficult but at the same time the most rewarding. Teaching children requires patience and constant engagement in various activities. As for adults, it takes a great deal of preparation and training of speaking. Many of my students were so happy to learn English. As time wore on I developed a really close bounds with my students. Even taking it further beyond the classroom. We would have time to take breaks and go out to cafe´s and practice our English conversational skills there, There were two students imparticular Ditto and Roseli that loved to use there times to speak.. On Tuesdays during our classes we would use the time to go to the local cafe and local supermarket to practice our English.. We would talk about anything that came to our mind. Using what we have learnt in classes.
From the past tense, present simple, future continuous, we were using English in our everyday speech to connect to the world. Ditto and Roseli and I would go out to the cafe and hold a 10 minute conversation speaking about what we encountered that day or what they have experienced in their past experience. I wanted to break them out of the comfort some of the classroom environment and make them think outside the box so they would know how to truly communicate with language. Along the way, I started to know little things about them which benefited us all in the classroom. Its been a a journey teaching them, both Ditto and Roseli pushed me to my limits. During my my time at INEP I saw students come and student go but Ditto and Roseli have been with me until now. At times it was difficult and I took some of those losses personality, but I have learnt you cant help everybody. You can only help those who want to be helped. You cant force a person to learn you can only give them the tools and show them how it works. Its been nearly a year since we´ve first met, but our teacher student relationship has grown into something more than just paper and pen. Its grown to a level of trust and understanding. Hopefully with the remaining time I still have here in Brazil I will impact change and help alot of people.
