Brazil – Day 1

How excited am I??  I’m about halfway through the first day of the Global Teacher’s Quest in Brazil – I’ll finish blogging this later, so by the end I will have finished blogging the first day. 

This morning, got up early – had breakfast (which included cakes).  Anyone that knows me will appreciate that I really like cakes … I’m something of a cake addict.  Brazilians seem to eat a lot of little cakes at almost every meal – this is something I approve of!

We then had a tour of Sao Paulo – looking at some parts of the city and learning a little of the way the city developed.  The city grew from some 50,000 inhabitants to over 10,000,000 in around 100 years.  This is something to do with the AC/BC effect apparently (before and after coffee)!!  The tour was really interesting, and we got to have a coffee in a pleasant café attached to a museum – I say coffee, I still haven’t got up the courage to drink one – I will, by the end of the week!

The next part of the day was a quick minibus ride to another hotel for lunch and conversations about the quest and thinking of ways that we can interact and put ourselves in the shoes of other people.  A really valuable time where we got to gel as a group.  It may just be me, but I reckon we were really open to this as teachers particularly.  I don’t know.  Learnt some interesting ideas and introduced to the concept of celebration assemblies – I like this – Something I’d like to see us try at school.  We also did some exercises in sharing with one another – people commented on how they’d like to try something similar in lessons, and it occurs to me that we use something similar in our school – the Kagan Co-operative Learning Strategies.  I must make sure I pass on some details to other people.

In the evening, we got to dress up (!) and had a meal accompanied with a speech from Paulo Renato Souza who is currently the Minister of Education in the State of Sao Paulo and was formerly the Minister for Education for the whole of Brazil!!!  Particularly challenged by the fact that he is very much on the other side of the political spectrum to me, yet I liked some of the things that he was saying about his approach to education.  I’ve never been great at listening to those from the ‘other side’ with an open mind, so it was a good experience to try and do that.  Brazil clearly needs some quite dramatic and quick changes for education to improve, and he does seem committed to doing that – I liked his ideas about distributing funding for schools and education.  He also talked about the problems faced by Brazil and in a balanced way.  Had the opportunity to share a little about the way education works in the UK too.

Incidentally, the food was pretty good too – a genuine Brazilian selection, and loads of it (check out the menu below) - I’d filled up on the snacks before the entrées came out – I shall be running at some point tomorrow!!

Continuing to get to know my fellow questees – all seem really nice, and I think I’ve fallen on my feet!!  Really looking forward to the next few days getting to know them more and see how I can continue to be challenged!

Most important thing from Day 1 – Being challenged to leave my political views outside!! (probably best demonstrated by the fact, I felt the need to explain my views to people on the way back in the bus)!!