Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future. (P. Freire - Pedagogy of the oppressed.)

I always liked kids, mostly because I had a huge respect for them. When I started teaching them, I tried to be as much humble I could. Teaching based on what they liked and what they wanted to be was easy, however mostly of them did not plan years to come ahead. Nevertheless, I always liked to talk to them looking them into their eyes.

The first experience besides private classes was at Almerinda Edite School (Feb.-Oct.: 2017). Because I was already a tech savvy I decided to ask the principal and owner of the school permission to use more technology on my hands, literally. I noticed that the English books were heavy, thus I decided to look for the books online and collect the audios and gather all of them on Google Drive folders and started using a (9") tablet. All the books weighed circa of 5kg (11lb), besides I could broadcast videos from the internet, also had some other apps that I could organize groups faster, evaluate participation, take some photos as the school pleased, and switched from be caring that old cd player to carry the tablet and a Bluetooth speaker.

Back then, I was just granted the Google for Education (GfE, now called Google Workstation for Education), I always like to brag be the only case that has the GfE in the smallest school possible, I was since before and now, a sole proprietorship of private classes not listed before as my economic activity classification is described in my business constitution form.

Because I was so happy and I believe in the law of balance. I should provide the Universe the same good that happened to me helping other people. I had just learned about Google Educators Group (link) and found out that Facebook was popular among teachers world wide. I saw teacher Nancy Stauber asking for pen-pals.

I wondered why not cyber-pals, I invited her to talk and we became friends and we decided to start organizing our first and only virtual exchange programs. Nancy was the ____ at Pavilion Central School District (Pavilion, NY, USA). It was so exiting linking our two school students.

It was an interesting challenge, I mean I just had noticed I could use the same Google meet link from computer (back then connected to my Bluetooth speaker and a data projector) in my cellphone which could work as an webcam (far better than laptop's camera) and microphone. I just needed a good wi-fi and set the apparatus up.

My Principal invited the press to cover it, and she recorded a part of the broadcasting. One thing that stuck in my mind was a question from our (Brazilian) kids asking what their kids did on holydays. The American kids said they would go hunting, and ours kids replied they would go fishing. That was a truly virtual exchange.

Two years has past since then (2019), then I got invited to teach and coordinate in a bilingual school, Espaço do Saber (Jan.-Sep.:2019).

They were launching this bilingual STEAM course, and asked my help for it. It had a methodology of presenting the students with some roles, and the school gave me green lights to use all my creativity.

I always wanted to teach using suspenders and I found the perfect one in this parties costume store. They had suspenders with the British flag on it. I started to wear that like a costume of being the teacher. The first role was to have an assistant then I bought another suspenders to my junior helper. We might needed some order in the class so I remember my brothers in blue, and got a plastic sheriff badge, who would set the volume of the class. A fake glass (without lens) would symbolize the tech savvy (it gave a nerdy look), this young person would help me fix the data projector and the musics in the class, we had our gardener and pet keeper who would wear this bee-hat.

For the science fair I was responsible to take care of the fourth and sixth grade's projects.

Each grade was divided in two teams. The fourth grade developed two sneakers by themselves. My main idea was to invite the students to interview people world wide to talk about footwear, even use some of my own contact who worked in a tennis factory, unfortunately the coordination of the school did not like the idea. The sixth grade was challenged to make a small oil spill experiment showing that it was possible to remove oil doing feather booms to avoid the expansion of a oil spill. In order to make it safer for the kids we used raw cooking oil and blue dyes.

This second school provided me the challenge of managing other teachers and the bilingual course program. I also learned to tire my most active students before we start the classes, and listen to them carefully looking into their eyes.