Teachers who Participated

Our project, which involved five partner teachers, four university students, and many kindergarten and first grade students, had the purpose to connect students and teachers who studied and worked in different locations. Despite the distance that existed between our three locations (São Paulo, Fortaleza, and two cities in Utah), our students were able to communicate with each other through writing letters and forming pen-pals. Furthermore, the young age of our students did not inhibit their ability to learn about a different culture. 

         Three different schools were involved in this project: Gustavo Barroso, Edith Bowen School, and Madureira.  

         Gustavo Barroso is located on the street of Bezerra de Menezes, close to the center of Fortaleza. It is considered one of the best public schools of the area. Over 1000 students attend GB. As in comparison to most other public city schools, GB is fortunate in that it has more nicer resources, including a small computer lab with 12 computers. Additonally, the school has a small playground, a cafeteria where students can obtain free lunch, a teacher´s lounge, and secretary´s office. It also has one court which is used for numerous activities: P.E. classes, auditorium activities, and sports such as basketball and soccer during recess.

         At Gustavo Barroso, Virginia worked with a first grade classroom and Ana Laura worked with a Educação Infantil II classroom (Kindergarden). The ages ranged from 5 to 7. The partner teachers at GB both had were experienced teachers, with at least 3 years at GB. They presently teach all the subjects for the grade, although most of their concentration is on alphabetização (reading and writing).  Math is the second most important subject. The students in this school are mostly students with low SES, meaning they do not have a lot of studying resources in the school or at home, and most importantly, they did not receive a lot of parent support.

           The school, Madureira is located in a small neighborhood called Vista Alegre, in Bauru, São Paulo. The neighborhood in which it is locate is pretty poor. It is located about five minutes away from the center of town.  It is a public school that teaches all age groups (first grade to high school). Each classroom usually has around 25-35 students in it. The desks, chairs, and chalkboards are pretty worn down and look like they have been used for many years. There is a large cement area inside of the school in which the students use to play in during their break. Amy was able to observe them during some of this time. The students ran around in the large cement area while the teachers went to the teacher lounge and had their break. The students were left with no supervision. There is also a large cement area located at the front of the school that is covered and used for sporting events and large gatherings. There are a few resources are available in the school, one of which is a room with a television and VCR and also a computer lab. The computer lab has about 12 computers; however, only about 6 work.

            At Madureira, Amy works with Professor Estella. She has been teaching at that school for about 13 years now. She teaches first grade and mainly focuses on reading and writing. The class that she was working with had around 25 students in it with a variety of backgrounds. There were a few students that had a lower SES than other students; for example, one student was not able to bring 25 centavos to school for an activity, when everyone else could. There were also not very many parents that were involved with their child’s schooling. Also, looking at the differences between the SES of the students brought into play how quickly or slowly the students picked up on different writing and reading skills.  

            During the classroom time that our partner teachers provided us, we worked with the students to create letters for students in a different location. We matched each student with another one in either the opposite country or a distant city (Fortaleza-Logan and Fortaleza-Bauru). Through these letters, the students shared information about what they were presently learning in class, what values were important to them, or what cultural components made up their city, state or country. Not only did the students get to practice their reading and writing skills, but they also were able to communicate with someone in a different place.

What we intended to do when our project started was to introduce an idea of multiculturalism in the classroom and to improve the students’ reading and writing skills. Fortunately, we were able to stick with these goals throughout our project.