Ano 09 nº 078/2021 – The family teaches how to teach

Por Lauren Barcellos

First of all, I have to say that I have a good relationship with my family, and consequently, I’m inspired by each member of it. My family is a family of teachers: my grandfather was the first to come to the “education side”, he was a teacher of English, Portuguese, and literature, and knew a little bit of Latin as well; after him, my aunt, my uncle’s wife, is a teacher of children, her job is focused on inclusive education; then the last teacher is my father, who is an art teacher; he hates the “theoretical” part of being a teacher, but he loves the classes, getting in contact with the students and talking to them; and my grandmother, who did not have a university degree but taught all her cousins to read and write when they lived in the countryside.

Even with all these examples around me, I did not want to be a teacher. I always said: “I want to be a translator, I am studying for that”, but they just told me to wait because the “little bug” of the education was going to bite me, and in fact, that happened to me, and I remember the exact moment that this happened. It was at a bad moment, but we can have good learning in the worst of circumstances. I was at my grandmother’s funeral when a cousin of my grandmother came where I was and said, “She was an amazing person. Did you know that it was she who taught me to read and write? She taught all our cousins and me because we did not know how to do it”. At that moment, I knew that being a teacher was in my blood, and, as well as that, I wanted to see that look of gratitude in my students’ eyes. 

I have never had an English teaching experience yet. I don’t know what kind of teacher I will be in this specific language because I believe that we use different tools to teach the students in each language. I want to be a mix of all my family members, I want to have the natural ability of communication that my father has, I want to have the best ideas of lesson plans that Silvani has, I want to have this desire to learn other languages that my grandfather had, I want to have the sensibility that my grandmother had when she taught her cousins. Above all, I want them to be proud of me as a teacher, as a professional, I want them to look at me as a coworker. When I make them feel proud of me, I will be proud of myself.

My name is Lauren. I am an undergraduate student of Additional Languages at Unipampa. Lover of horror, fantasy books, and everything in the geek world. laurenbarcellos.aluno@unipampa.edu.br