A revolution in Rio
High-tech English program reaches over barriers to change lives and build opportunities
THE
TOUGH SLUMS of Rio might seem an unlikely place to find a revolution in education.
And yet one has been quietly under way for three years.
EnglishWorks has connected thousands of poor cariocas to a bigger world through English language training.
Daniel Duete, 21, has been a student and in-class volunteer for two years. He has just began studies at Rio’s Federal Institute for Education, Science and Technology. He wants to be a chemical engineer.
“The English class is wonderful, the teacher is funny, there are foreign volunteers. It is dynamic. We can see and talk and send messages. It will help me get a better job,” says Duete.
EnglishWorks is anything but run-of-the-mill language training.
Anchored by an in-class Englishspeaking Brazilian teacher, it makes liberal use of social media and online education techniques to teach students how to write and speak English. As well, part of each lesson is taught by a native English-speaking teacher live over the Internet.
Digital technology is also used to bring native English speaking volunteers into the classroom for one-onone conversation practice. Volunteers span the globe from South Africa and Australia to Mexico City and Edmonton.
The program costs the students nothing.
Most of the students are low income and could otherwise never study English because training is prohibitively expensive in Brazil.
In mid-November, Steve Williams, a 51-year-old linguist from northern England, attended a class during an education and technology conference in Rio. He calls it a pioneering project. “It builds on the idea that if technology is in a place people will use it,” says the director of IT at Newcastle University in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Williams was impressed by other innovations — such as the mix of students from young to old and the focus on teaching English for “day-today conversations.”
Online education is not new but the combination of free access and live conversations with a native speaker in the classroom is rare, says Daniela Lyra Cardoso who helped create the first EnglishWorks lessons.
“The content was developed to enable Brazilians to have a conversation with foreigners,” says Cardoso, an educational technology specialist at Casa Thomas Jefferson in Brasilia where she develops curriculum and teaches English.
“There was this idea of asking volunteers from all over the world to interact with Brazilian people — foreigners to be foreigners, Brazilians to be Brazilians. It was something very simple. They would practise in the language that they could use later on,” says 45-year-old Cardoso, who has been a teacher for more than 20 years.
Alicia Jabar is one of 30 foreign volunteers who practise online conversation with students every week.
“One young man came on during my second week and he was smiling and enthusiastic and I thought to myself ‘He’s happy to do this and I am making a difference by speaking to him.’ It just made me smile,” says the 32-year-old secondary school teacher who was born in Toronto and grew up in Mississauga.
She has taught at Canadian schools in China and Malaysia and now lives in Bradford-on-Avon.
Jabar joined the EnglishWorks project a few months ago so she could tutor while she waits to get her work visa in England. This is the first time she has taught adults.
“I get as much out of it as they do, I’m sure. I look forward to it every week. I look forward to seeing them and talking to them and I try to help them as best as I can, correcting them and encouraging them.”
Conversation practice emphasizing the practical. Skype dialogues between Brazilian students and foreign volunteers takes place in the last half hour of the two-hour classes.
RESTAURANT,
hotel and resort workers, taxi drivers, high school students, housewives and the retired make the trek to class each week. Some want to improve their English to better their chances at a decent job when the 2016 Olympics arrive in Rio.
“The whole program is innovative,” says Carla Arena, head of the educational technology and digital communication department at Casa Thomas Jefferson, a non-profit in Brasilia that teaches English and trains and develops teachers. Casa Thomas Jefferson developed some of the teacher professional development content for the Sequoia Foundation, the parent of EnglishWorks.
“The blended model is brand new here in Brazil. There is someone in the classroom with the students and at the same time we have the web conference (for online participants) so everyone is in one place together. And it is not just lecturing, the participants are doing hands-on, online and social media activities, which is different from a lecture.”
All those elements add up to more and better assimilation of information, in other words, better learning.
In Brazil, English is often taught from text books by educators who are not required to speak English. Many teach English in Portuguese. At EnglishWorks, students are often taught in English in class by Brazilians and online by English speaking teachers and volunteers.
But EnglishWorks is also having an influence outside the rough and tumble neighbourhoods of Rio.
Arena says there are plans to use the model to train some of Casa Thomas Jefferson’s new teachers, who instruct thousands of well-off Brazilians.
ENGLISHWORKS was
started by Rio-born Patricia Machado, a trained chemical engineer who also holds an MBA in marketing.
“We want to give access to students who have never had a chance to learn English in their public school system. In Brazil it is mainly focused on grammar. Our main focus is on oral language and listening,” says Machado.
It is not just lecturing, the participants are doing hands-on, online and social media activities.
For EnglishWorks students the learning curve can be steep.
Many speak only basic English and many are unfamiliar with digital tools. Lots do not have a computer at home.
“People do not know how to learn online. They need a bit of a push and a bit of a support system to be able to go online,” says Machado, the 44year-old executive director of the Sequoia Foundation.
“We want them to put their toes in the water of an online learning system and then at the end of the course they will be able to learn online on their own.”
Rio can be a tough place to live and sometimes violence makes it hard to even get to class.
In September, for example, a police chief was killed in a shootout with suspected drug dealers. A few days later, Rio’s Catholic archbishop was carjacked at gunpoint.
In May, students in several EnglishWorks school areas missed classes because it was simply too dangerous to walk the street as violence swept parts of Rio.
At another centre, students have to pass through a checkpoint run by drug dealers who control the neighbourhood. In yet another, when classes end after dark students leave in a group to reduce the risk of assault.
The program launched in 2011 as part of a city plan to build a network of “knowledge squares” around Rio in an attempt to bring residents into the digital future.
The squares were to be futuristic buildings called knowledge vessels. The Naves do Conhecimento would be typical community centres with a playground, recreational space, reception areas and rooms for classes. They were to be located in some of the rougher parts of the city of six million.
But they would also be equipped with the latest technology offering a window to a world of learning.
The idea took a leap forward after Machado had dinner with Franklin Dias Coelho, the secretary of science and technology of the city of Rio, and he talked about the innovative plan for Rio.
Machado had worked in education for 12 years, leading the Sequoia Foundation’s program to train Brazilian teachers. She was intrigued. The idea offered a chance to smooth, just a little, the sharp edges of the Brazilian divide between rich and poor.
EnglishWorks classes run in a 20week cycle. There are eight classes a week, four on Wednesday, four on Friday. There are two levels, one beginner, one more advanced.
Government and foundation funding covers the cost of 780 students each semester but sometimes enrollment runs as high as 1,000 students at the eight sites.
Every semester 1,500 to 2,000 apply to the program. New students are picked in a random draw.
When it launched in late summer 2011 there were two sites offering one day of classes a week to 160 students.
“We just surveyed 500 of our students. They say their main challenge is to talk on Skype with the native speakers. They also say that is the part of the course they enjoy the most,” says Machado.
Canadian Jason Skitch lives in Rio and is one of two native Englishspeaking online teachers.
The 43-year-old from Peterborough, Ont., has been with the project for two years.
“It feels like family. I’m very proud of the work we do as an organization, but also the work I do as an individual,” says Skitch, a certified ESL teacher and Trent University grad.
“Our students really respond favourably to the program and to me as a teacher. It feels good to be appreciated. My students make me feel special every time I see them.” Roger Gillespie is a former managing editor of The Hamilton Spectator. He teaches in the EnglishWorks program. If you want more information about the program contact Patricia Machado at patricia@sqafoundation.org Special to The Hamilton Spectator