Caszara Lockett, 29, achieved her teaching qualifications in her native Australia. After teaching at a summer camp in Barcelona, Spain, she changed environments and volunteered to teach in the favelas (slums) of Salvador, Brazil. There she taught everyone from disadvantaged children to middle-aged women, earning their respect with the intermediate Portuguese she had acquired thanks to her abilities in Spanish. Here she reveals five lessons she learnt during her time there…
1. Teach through music
“I realised pretty quickly that Brazil is a very happy, colourful and musical country. On the first day I met the children, they sang me a beautiful traditional welcome song. I could tell they weren’t tired of singing that song – despite the many times they would have already done so – because they were so happy clapping and singing together. I saw that music would be a way that I could connect with them and decided to teach them through songs.
“It wasn’t just the children, either. The women who would come to the school and take part in activities such as sewing, art and crafts would all the while be singing along to music on the radio. I learnt that the best way to teach them was to use a very creative, hands-on approach… and music!”
2. Your students are teaching you more than you think
“I can honestly say that after two years of teaching abroad, I’ve learnt much more about myself than I ever thought possible. After every lesson, I walked away feeling I’d learnt just as much, if not more, than my students. They taught me a new level of patience, compassion, commitment and focus that I never knew I had in me!”
3. Volunteering is worth it
“I was a bit pessimistic about volunteering at first, worrying about my safety and what the school would be like, and whether it would be worth my time. It turned out to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. When you arrive in places like the favelas in Brazil, your own issues suddenly feel very minuscule in the grand scheme of things. These students were some of the happiest I’ve ever taught – surprising, given their backgrounds. My payment from volunteering work was that my students were so responsive and eager to learn.”
4. Essentially, all students want to do is talk
“Students just love to talk – especially in Brazil! So I geared my lesson plans to give them a lot of time to interact with one another, but speaking English, for example. I focused on a lot of communicative activities, songs and rhymes to keep them entertained and engaged. Luckily, Brazilians are a proud, confident people, so it wasn’t much of a challenge.”
5. Don’t take yourself too seriously!
“When I started teaching, I even changed what I wore so that I would be taken seriously by my students. I completely over-prepared by spending hours on lesson planning, only to cover about a quarter of what I’d done. Lessons are spontaneous because you’re dealing with real people and random class situations that can lead a lesson anywhere. It’s better to plan what you need to cover, but leave time for questions that may get the class sidetracked for a bit… It makes it more interesting!”
This article has been adapted from an original article published here.
In this article
