As Wall (2006) argued: "Autoethnography is an emerging qualitative research
method that allows the author to write in a highly personalized style, drawing
on his or her experience to extend understanding about a societal phenomenon."
Teaching in
Brazil was not an easy task. The schools were old and the school’s supplies
were scarce. The economy in Brazil was never good, and the corruption
contributed to the lack of resources for schools and for so many other
organizations dedicated to the public interest. In other words, a very sad situation,
but that never let my mood to be changed or my dreams to be vanished away!
We had, though,
to save absolutely everything in order to have materials available for any
project we wanted to create. That was always our main goal, to save as much
school supplies and resources as we could to make it last until the end of the
school year. Students had to learn very early in life how to “budget” for school
supplies... and for everything else!
With the “save
everything’s mind set” came a lot of creativity. We had to be creative, we had
to invent and recycle things. I remember using lots of different materials in
my Art classes. We also learned how to share and trade everything we could.
I used to have in
my classroom a large treasure box! It was not like these treasure boxes that
you see here in Canada at the restaurants where the children can pick a cool
toy at the end of their meals. My treasure box housed recycled pieces of paper,
wool, tape, buttons, thread, yarn, glue, a few pairs of scissors, and a few
other things that we could use to create a great artifact. That was all we had
to be artistic when working on a classroom project. Sometimes I would have a
few students bringing some supplies from home to the classroom as well, but nothing fancy,
only a few scraps of what their moms had in their sewing kits, a few empty
yogurt containers, egg cartons, etc.
However, at the
end of the day, we would have castles, princes and princess, parks, forests,
airplanes, hospitals, schools, cars, ambulances and so many other cool things
made of recycled materials. All of the students' work was designed through a lot of creativity and personal involvement.
We had to be
careful so our artifacts would not fall apart before getting home, as the amount of glue and
tape we had was very limited. We normally had a mini-fair where the other students
from different classes would come and look at our creations. Then, the students would take their objects home and cherish them as if they were precious models.
Those artifacts were precious to them and to their families. Those simple pieces
of artwork were more than precious! And, I really miss that time...
Reference:
Wall,
Sarah. (2006). An Autoethnography on Learning about Autoethnography. In International
Journal of Qualitative Methods 5 (2) Article 9. Retrieved from http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/5_2/pdf/wall.pdf
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