Teacher from Brazil Visits Clyst Vale

As the College continues to expand its international links, we were delighted to host a visit from Carla Colares, a teacher from Fortaleza, Brazil, who is a colleague of ex-Clyst Vale Maths teacher Andrea Blair.  Carla spent two days with us, seeing how the English education system operates.  As well as visiting classes in English, Maths, Languages and Special Education, Carla also answered questions about life in Brazil in sessions with Year 13 and Y8 Geography students.Carla found that our students are very well-behaved, and received much more varied learning and teaching approaches, and she commented on the excellent relationships between staff and students.

Carla Colares

I am a psychologist and a teacher in Fortaleza, Brazil. I teach English as a second language in two schools: at Fisk, which is a well-known language school in Brazil; and at Gira Mundo School, which is a primary school in Fortaleza. The education system in Brazil is much more simplistic than in England: we don’t receive the same proportion of government funding and this limits the resources and facilities available in the classroom. We use whiteboards and textbooks a lot, the children are not always so polite – usually they don’t raise their hands before talking, which can cause a lot of distraction during class. We don’t have briefings at the beginning of the day, the technology department doesn’t even exist, and although we have a similar system of pastoral support, I personally think the background work that I saw being done at Clyst Vale is above and beyond all expectations. I do believe we can learn from that, and I am looking forward to sharing my experiences at Clyst Vale Community College with my colleagues in Fortaleza.