There are no Black Holes at E. M. Alfredo Baeta

 Monday, June 17, 2024

 

The alarm went off, and it is butt freezing cold and I thought “I don’t wanna go to school today”.

 

I am so glad I did though. Let me tell you why the Alfredos were particularly amazing today.

 

The lesson was nothing really spectacular, just moments of bliss… sabe? I could watch the teachers, and how they explain things for hours. I feel like I am watching someone paint a painting.  In this case the brush strokes are the gentle way they get the kids to think and share and show. How they coach them in learning to use the algorithm for long division.

 

They were doing long division problems, the kids were asking questions, suddenly one young lady raised her hand and began talking to the teacher about black holes. She repeated a definition, perfectly, and just wanted to share – “she had read it on the internet”. I was at the back of the room, the teacher up front, and we both looked at each other with wide eyes.

 

The kids continued, I shared how I did long-division, and it was great fun. Then the teacher left for a moment, and we did some more word problems… they were awesome (I am amazed at how I have them, even with my heavily accented Portuguese). Then we played a game, a big puzzle – 14 kids each gave me a number, I wrote it down, then we counted how many people in the room, 16 (including the teacher and me). And we talked about how to solve this ridiculously big problem that we made up.

 

Full stop… then the teacher came back, and we talked about one way… and we made a table: 1x16 = 16, 2 x 16 = 32… etc. I used to do this craziness at Riverdale in Portland, back in the day, and the kids did amazing discoveries… after a while the kids began giving us crazy problems to puzzle out.

 

Vamos ver // Let’s see.

 

Before I left, I got more questions, “What do you do?” “Is it better here in Brasil or the USA?” “Does everyone in the USA have an IPhone?” Sigh… I talked a bit about how I am a professor at UFOP, they think that’s cool (me too) and then I always leave them, I tell them I am waiting for them to come to study with me at UFOP someday. You can see them light up, just a drop of confidence, and they flower.

 

There is nothing wrong with these kids, that just a nudge here, an encouragement there, a point or question to an error, and congratulations on being right can’t fix. I am so in love with these kids, and the forgiving nature of the teachers there.

 

There is no such thing as a black hole at E. M. Alfredo Baeta.