RecipeEducation Centres & the best practices to prevent ESL

Thessaloniki, 2nd - 7th October 2016

TIME PASSENGERS

Maria Curado

I never teach my pupils, I only provide the conditions in which they can learn, Albert Einstein

Good practices can•encourage young people to complete education• improve lifelong learning•not only prevent ESL, but also bring students back to School•prove that LITERATURE is, sometimes, a powerful way.

Partnership: AESB (a regular state School ) – CEPAO (an Educational Centre for juvenile delinquents) Subject: Language and Communication (Portuguese)

Target group: young offenders in re-education, attending

vocational courses in order to continue studying and/or

re-intregate society as educated and semi-skilled workers.

What did they say/think?

•“Study? What for?”•“Go home, we don`t need you here!”•“We already know how to speak Portuguese.”•“What do you think we can learn from you?”•“Go to your equals, do you think we are a toy ?•…

How to deal with total refusal?

Wallflowersonly!!! They decided not to talk or to react at all.

Image source: Internet

What to do? What`s the right attitude?

Images source: Internet

A powerful allied, a genious and his/their dreams:

FERNANDO PESSOA et all

Image source: Internet

Offered poems and meaningful texts, more poems… and .was available before, after and during lessons, during breaks, etc.. was always excited about my subjects. repeted with a difference. covered the same subject in less time with less intensity. provided material at intervals…

After some time, the first reactions

- You fool, do you think you can convince us with poems and nice words?

- That man is completely mad!

- Was he in a hospice?

- Do you think we are mad too?

- And they say we are strange!!!

- …

First results

Some notesLoose words

Some sentences, some ideas, first smiles, …

“Come here, help me, please!”

So, we• sat together• read together• wrote together• comprehended together• corrected together• rewrote together• …

. PRODUCED THE FIRST TEXTS The wallflowers were then motor mouths

KeywordsCONFIDENCE

UNDERSTANDINGCUMPLICITYAFFECTION

And all those texts led to

At the end, they were really proud, happy and willing• to complete compulsory education or even go further• to read more and write more, with much more interest and accuracy• to go back to regular School

and Literature did actually do its work!

[…]To be great, be whole;Exclude nothing, exagerate nothing that is not yours.Be whole in everything. Put all you areInto the smallest things you do.For in each lake, the moon shines with splendor,For it blooms up above.

In Poemas de Fernando Pessoa, Ricardo Reis

Thank you very much for your kind attention. See you around!

Maria Curado