The Brazilian Teacher: A vignette about language barriers in an English class

This vignette is an experience obtained from a class observation, which took place in the third year of secondary school with more than forty 14-year-old students, sitting in benches, in twos. Having been born in Brazil, the teacher, Ms. De Souza, had a huge language barrier –she spoke very little Spanish– and she seemed to have very little experience in front of a class. Hence, the heads of the institution only received complaints from both parents and students about her performance as a teacher –this is the reason why the observation of the class occurred. The class began like many others, with noisy teenagers minding their own business. The teacher started asking for silence to be able to start with the class. Once a barely acceptable silence had been achieved, she started with the topics she had in mind for that class. The previously mentioned language barrier made it almost impossible for the teacher to communicate with her class, which resulted in the students not paying attention to anything she was trying to say so, in no time, the classroom became a battlefield. The disorder and the lack of clear instructions from the teacher set the atmosphere for the disaster that was to come. Despite the presence of the Head of the institution in the classroom, the students started throwing school supplies to one another with the outcome that an eraser ended up impacting on the teacher´s head. With this scenario, the class had to come to an end, leaving students in the care of a janitor and the Head of the school taking the teacher to the hospital because she claimed to be suffering from excruciating pain.