Beautiful Brazil 2012 – Segment 4: The Conference

At the end of the weeks work in St Paul’s school they hosted a huge open conference ‘Educating To Keep Pace With Change’. What was so amazing was that many of St Paul’s parents financially supported it so it could open up to non English-speaking Brazilian government schools as well. Maybe about 300 delegates attended. For non English-speaking delegates they bought in translators. Translators are amazing people who have to quickly understand all your ideas and quirky humour within seconds and then translate them into Portuguese!

The Brazilian teachers all have headphones on – I have a mic – and the translator in his booth at the back does his magic. The only problem was that I was running large circle workshops which are very active – so I had to keep running across the circle with a hand mic so any of the contributing delegates could be interpreted as well. Manic – but marvellous! These workshops were very special cos they were truly the biggest mix of teachers and teaching assistants from poor and rich schools, from democratic and authoritarian schools you could ever imagine. Yet through the games, the fun, the rounds, the pair work, the scripts they blended and bonded. Smiley warm faces at the end of 2½ hours of solid circle time!

Click here for a link to St Paul’s website conference flier
There was also a wonderful mix of speakers and workshop leaders – look them up on St Paul’s website from many different countries including Portugal and Brazil. I was asked to do the ending keynote speech for the whole conference where all the admin and catering staff had also been invited. Hundreds! Mine was on ‘Keeping Your Spirits High’ – so it involved a lot of fun and laughter. At the end though I decided to give everyone the wonderful poem by William Crocker called ‘A People Place’:

If this is not the place where tears are understood,
where do I go to cry?
If this is not a place where my spirits can take wing,
Where do I go to fly?
If this is not a place where my questions can be asked,
Where do I go to seek?
If this is not a place where my feelings can be heard,
Where do I go to speak?
If this is not a place where you’ll accept me as I am,
Where can I go to be?
If this is not a place where I can try to and learn to grow,
Where can I just be me?

It makes you think, doesn’t it?

Web Manager’s Note

Jenny wrote this whilst on a conference trip for South American schools to Brazil. Jenny first visited St. Paul’s School in Sao Paulo. Jenny participated in the school’s first ever education conference entitled “Educating to keep Pace with Change” and was amongst other key international speakers including Carol Ann Tomlinson, Dylan Williams, Mark Church and Margaret MacLean. Jenny went on to train in several schools in Brazil. This blog is one five juicy segments of Jenny’s Brazilian blog.

Jenny and her model have been instrumental in an important action research project in India entitled Safe and Sensitive Schools – click the link here to see a video that has resulted from the research.�

She regularly contributes keynotes, training and workshops at large conferences in the UK and abroad. If you are holding a conference in the UK or abroad do phone 01225 767157 or email circletime@jennymosley.co.uk to see if we can help with keynotes and workshops.

A Golden Freebie!

CLICK HERE to download and print off to keep one of Jenny Mosley’s Golden Moments cards. We will be giving away samples from Jenny’s Golden Inspiration�and�Golden Moment regularly with Jenny’s blogs and on Facebook so start collecting now!�