Taking 'manic Mondays' to a new level: A day in the life of a Rio public school teacher

Public school teachers in Brazil often work at more than one school in order to cobble together a full-time pay check.

|
Sergio Moraes/Reuters/File
A teacher poses with a blackboard reading 'Brazil School' as children sitting in front of desks with signs reading 'FIFA standard schools' hold official 2014 FIFA World Cup soccer balls, as they pose at what is meant to represent a public school classroom, during a protest against the 2014 World Cup, organized by non-governmental organization (NGO) Rio de Paz (Rio of Peace) at the Jacarezinho slum in Rio de Janeiro May 14, 2014.

Bruno Moreira is a geography teacher at two public schools in separate Rio de Janeiro state municipalities. He teaches about 44 hours a week, with an additional 12 hours of classroom preparation.

“My hope for the future of Brazilian schools is that education and teachers will be valorized. That students’ families will accompany them and encourage them in their studies ... and for better resources on a broad level, [including] teaching materials and social services, like a psychologist in schools,” Mr. Moreira says.

Here's a typical weekday schedule for Moreira:

6:00 a.m. I wake up, eat breakfast, and take a bath.

6:50 a.m. I drive about 10 minutes to my first school in Magé, a city northeast of metropolitan Rio. I mentally run through my lesson plan en route and go straight to class.

7:00 a.m. The first class of the day starts with a room full of eighth-graders. I teach five 50-minute classes with five minutes between each session. One class is for “advanced age” students (16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds) studying at the fifth-grade level.

11:45 a.m. After the final morning class I go directly to my car and drive 35 miles to the Vila Kennedy “favela” in the city of Rio. I think about afternoon to-dos on the hour-long drive. Sometimes there’s traffic and I’m 15 minutes late to my next class.

12:45 p.m. Upon arrival, I go straight to the cafeteria for a quick lunch. I chat with other teachers about the security situation: Conflicts between drug traffickers here can make students tense, and sometimes classes are canceled outright.

1:00 p.m. I begin teaching five 50-minute classes to sixth-, eighth-, and ninth-graders. Class size ranges from 20 to 35 students; sometimes I wear a microphone headset so my voice can be heard over the chatter. There are no breaks between classes, except a 15-minute recess at 2:40.

5:30 p.m. Once classes are out, I tidy the room. If there were disciplinary issues in any class, this is when I report them to the main office. I try to resolve conflicts in the classroom without raising my voice: I want to show the students that there are ways to deal with problems without yelling.
 

5:45 p.m. I start my hour-and-15-minute commute home.

7:00 p.m. I grab a snack and head to the gym. Working out is how I unwind. I also like chatting with other teachers online.

9:00 p.m. I grade papers and plan tomorrow’s lesson. Sometimes I have to pack my own materials, such as maps or books.

11:30 p.m. I go to bed!

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Taking 'manic Mondays' to a new level: A day in the life of a Rio public school teacher
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2014/0608/Taking-manic-Mondays-to-a-new-level-A-day-in-the-life-of-a-Rio-public-school-teacher
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe