First Time Teaching Refugees

I got to Riacho Fundo a little early for the refugee class, as I normally do, but of course everyone else was Brasilian customary late. I got some time to talk to Wanessa, who is one of the Brasilian volunteer professors. She is doing a degree in International Relations and speaks English very well. We worked with two men from Pakistan and I jumped right into teaching. I had expected to spend the first day observing and seeing how they teach, but I couldn't help myself and pulled out a notebook to write down examples, charts, and information. Even though I’m not the best at Portuguese, I still have the teacher thing down and I found it pretty easy to explain the basics. We went over concepts like estar vs ser, how to conjugate the present indicative regular verbs, and some vocabulary of places around town. It was nerve-wrecking teaching a foreign language, but also very great to team-work with Wanessa since she is a native speaker and she would explain a lot of the concepts more in depth and give examples. There were also three guys from Cuba there, but they worked with Professor Eduardo. It was really fun talking to the two professors after the class as we waited for the bus, and they’re about my age. I was nervous going in, but it ended up being so fulfilling. It feels like part of my experience in Brasil has come full circle- I started my time in Brasil in 2018 by learning Portuguese in a class with refugees, and a year later I'm giving back by teaching Portuguese classes to refugees. You can follow more of my adventures teaching refugees on the Instagram account- Odireitoshumanos