Biography 1

Running head: BIOGRAPHY

Essay # 1 - Biography

Márcio Padilha

College of Southern Idaho

EDUC 201 – Hurley

Fall/2006
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Márcio Padilha’s Biography

I grew up in Porto Alegre, a city with 3.8 million inhabitants in the south of Brazil where

I received my elementary, secondary and partial higher education, which in Brazil are

respectively referred to as First, Second and Third Degrees. In light of that, I will briefly explain

how the educational system is organized and carried out in Brazil.

In order to maximize the use of facilities, kindergarten through fourth grade go to school

from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and fifth through eighth grade go to school from 1:00 p.m. to

5:00 p.m. The high school grades run in three shifts: morning, afternoon and night, the latter

being from 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. The school day consists of five 45 minute-long periods and

one 15 minute-long break. Teachers rotate in and out of classrooms, not the students. The school

year runs from mid-March to mid-November with the month of July off. Other than

kindergarten, all grades carry a permanent record and failure to achieve a passing concept or

score in any subject causes the student to repeat all subjects of the grade in question over again.

Although passing grades are mandatory for academic promotion, class attendance is not. Upon

completion of the Second Degree, one must pass a rigorous entrance exam in order to be

admitted for the Third Degree. First and Second Degree Curricula are regulated by the Chamber

of Basic Education, whereas Third Degree Curricula is regulated by the National Council of

Education, organs of the Ministry of Education and Culture. Hence, the content taught is fairly

uniform throughout the Brazilian National Territory.

The First Degree comprises the first eight years of schooling, excluding kindergarten,

which is optional. Between first and third grade, student performance is rated through concepts,

i.e. excellent, satisfactory and unsatisfactory, whereas from fourth grade on student performance
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is graded in a numerical system from 0 to 100 with 70 being the minimal score for promotion

into the next grade level.

For the first four years of my schooling, I had one general education instructor per school

year who taught all four core subject matters, which were Communication and Expression,

Social Studies, Sciences and Religion, being Roman Catholicism, whereas from fifth grade on I

had one instructor for each subject matter. Beginning in fifth grade, my First Degree curriculum

was comprised of Portuguese Language, English Language, Arts, Physical Education,

Geography, History, Morals and Civics, Brazilian Socio-Political Organization, Mathematics,

Sciences, Domestic Techniques, Commercial Techniques and Religion.

The Second Degree is comprised of three years and it can be either Classic, which infers

a course of general studies, or Technical, inferring that an extra set of subject matters geared to

professional development has been implemented into the curriculum. The Technical Second

Degree is similar to the Associate’s Degree in the United States. Having chosen to pursue a

Technical Second Degree in Publicity and Advertising, my curriculum was comprised of

Portuguese Language, Portuguese and Brazilian Literatures, English Language, Philosophy,

Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physical and Biological Sciences, Geography,

History, Morals and Civics, Brazilian Socio-Political Organization, Art Education, Physical

Education, Religion. The technical component consisted of Publicity, Marketing, Drawing,

Computer Science, Psychology, Intro to Business Administration, Accounting, Statistics,

Economics and Supervised Professional Practice.

After my first year of the Second Degree, however, I came to the United States as a

Foreign Exchange Student, being placed in Idaho Falls where I attended high school for the
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second semester of the 1988-89 school year where I studied US Literature, Health, US History

and French.

Upon returning to Brazil, I finished my Second Degree and subsequently pursued a

Bachelor’s Degree in Public Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University of the State of Rio

Grande do Sul at Porto Alegre. As I had not liked the inherent commercial aspect of Publicity, I

thought that a shift into Public Relations would be great, but I soon found out that such a career

was way too politically correct for me. Then, attempting to remain somewhat in the

communications field I had pursued in secondary studies, I sought reassignment as a Journalism

Major, which I ended up loving.

Although I had done several freelance jobs as an English-Portuguese/Portuguese-English

Interpreter/Translator since I was 16 years old, my first official job, which was a secretary at the

School of Communication of the Pontifical Catholic University at Porto Alegre, came when I

was 19 years old. As such, I did regular clerical work as well as customer service with both the

faculty and the student body. Nonetheless, given my fluent English, the University

Administration frequently pulled me out of my regular duties, having me escort most foreign

visitors in and out of campus, which in turn gave me a much greater exposure to the bilingual

event organizers in town, which consequently led me to being hired more and more often as a

translator/interpreter. Hence, as a natural consequence, I quit my secretarial position in favor of a

translating career, which offered more flexible hours and much better pay in 1989. Nonetheless,

within approximately one year, I was invited back to the University by one of my professors as a

tutor for a special “Portuguese as a Foreign Language” program of study where approximately

300 foreign students would study Portuguese. These students, most of whom were from Africa

and the Caribbean, came to Brazil as the result of a multi-national cooperation agreement
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between their home countries which selected the program participants, the United Nations which

funded the participants’ living cost while in Brazil and the government of Brazil which provided

education free of charge for the participants. As a tutor, I helped them with Portuguese language

acquisition, presiding over a group of six Senegalese in their mid-20s for one semester, one of

the best experiences of my life.

Once this professional opportunity was over, I returned to my translating gigs and

Journalism-related courses until 1995 when I came to the United States and married a girl I had

met when I had been an exchange student in Idaho back in 1988-1989. In light of my

immigration, although I was really close, I did not finish my bachelor’s degree in Journalism.

Despite my marriage to a US Citizen, it took me nearly two years to get permission to

work. In America, my first job was in 1996 as a guest teacher with the Twin Falls School District

where, having serviced both junior highs and the high school for approximately two school

years, I extensively covered all humanities classes. That, nonetheless, was a difficult job for me

at the time due to both my relative unfamiliarity with the American social standards and the

small age difference between the students and myself. So I transitioned into something totally

under the radar: a janitor at CSI’s Expo Building, which I did for approximately the next six

years.

Then around 2003, my father-in-law started having serious health problems. As he

became more and more dependent, my wife and I reached the consensus that it was easier, more

practical and cost-efficient for me to quit my job and care for his needs, which I did between

2003 and 2005. However, as he started getting better, I returned to the Twin Falls School District

where I was rehired as a guest teacher. As I reported to my first guest teaching assignment at

Robert Stuart Junior High School in October of 2005, I was informed that the teacher I was
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covering for would be absent for a long period due to illness. So I interviewed for and was

selected to cover for the Language Arts Writing classes on a long-term basis. During the tenure

of this long-term assignment, I handled 167 ninth graders and, with the assistance of the other

certified writing teacher, worked my hardest to deliver the necessary content as well as to

navigate within the “sea of regulations, expectations and individualities” of the school system.

Although this assignment would have lasted until the end of the 2005-2006 school year, I

pursued reassignment as a Title I ESL/ELL Instructional Aide for the second semester. As such,

I was in charge of assisting English Language acquisition instruction to four students as well as

assisting in ESL/ELL Study Skills Classes. This classroom was extremely diverse and the fact I

was “one of them” did help me out a lot in reaching the ESL/ELL students.

At the end of the school year, I received the “Play Dough Award” from my ninth grade

students in recognition of “having molded their minds in great shape” as well as a “Recognition

Award” from the Counselor’s office for having actively participated in the school’s mentoring

program.

My next job was as a Para Educator for the Junior High School Summer Session held at

the Vera C. O’Leary Junior High School during the 2006 summer, helping out with clerical work

and sixth grade math. For the current school year, I have been hired as a secretary to the

counselors at Robert Stuart Junior High School, doing general clerical work as well as customer

service with the general student population.

Throughout my life, my extracurricular activities have always tended to be cultural. I

started studying English privately at the North-American Brazilian Bi-national Cultural Institute

of Porto Alegre when I was in fifth grade and kept at it for many years. Through my English

course, I met a Brazilian lady who was married to a Frenchman. So, by visiting with them, I
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started picking up lots of French, which I eventually studied academically in high school in

Idaho Falls and at the University in Brazil. Simply by spending time in Uruguay and Argentina I

picked up a lot of Spanish which I later studied academically at CSI.

Traveling is another of my passions and I do see it as the ultimate interactive text book.

So far I have been to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Panama, Western United States,

Western Canada, Jamaica, France, China and South Korea. I believe that exposure to cultural

differences is essential to understanding the importance of ethno diversity.

All things considered, I started contemplating teaching as a profession during my long-

term guest teaching position, which was intense on-the-job training I handled quite well. Besides

giving my existence a purpose, I enjoyed the fact that the diverse knowledge and experiences I

have serve a professional purpose and, in my view, the privilege of interacting with the students

far outweighs the eventual aggravations that come with teaching, making it both challenging and

rewarding enough of a career to grow old in. So I plan to continue to work full time and take

classes part-time until I complete my teaching degree in secondary education.