Living not at home

Consegue bater na cabeça e esfregar a barriga ao mesmo tempo? Consegue ir às compras enquanto ajuda o teu filho com o TPC de matemática através do telemóvel?  Consegue ler uma língua enquanto ouve uma segunda língua ocultada pela primeira? Consegui recentemente realizar o terceiro destes desafios de multitarefas e o brilho da realização ainda está comigo. Trabalho numa escola em Portugal. Comecei no ano passado, quando foi acrescentada uma ala internacional; internacional no sentido em que o meio de instrução é inglês, as qualificações são certificadas por uma organização registada no Reino Unido, e a maioria dos alunos vem de fora de Portugal. A escola existe há quase de noventa anos, por isso os seus sistemas já estavam estabelecida antes de começar a oferecer o inglês com o meio de instrução: registo, políticas, planos de actividades, directrizes de vestuário, categorias para registar as faltas dos alunos e todos os outros procedimentos necessários para um funcionamento eficaz. ...

Can you pat your head and rub your belly at the same time? Can you do the weekly shop whilst helping with maths homework over the phone?  Can you read one language whilst hearing a second language behind it? I recently managed the third of these multi-tasking challenges and the glow of achievement is still with me. I work in a school in Portugal. I joined last year when it added an international wing; international in the sense that lessons are delivered in English, qualifications are certified by an organisation registered in the UK, and most pupils come from beyond Portugal.  The school has been in existence for nearly ninety years so its supporting infrastructure was already well-established before it started offering a curriculum taught in English: policies, term planners,  clothing guidelines,   categories for recording pupil absence and all the other written procedures necessary for effective operation. And, naturally, all of this was in Portuguese. A handful o...

The tradition on 1st May is to put twigs of broom on your door. Cytisus scoparius  protects against evil, or celebrates the abundance of late spring, or both at once. The long thin twigs are put on front doors, on car doors, on garage doors, on any living space. Sometimes they have the saffron yellow flowers, sometimes just the stubby clusters of leaves. On the edge of town we took a wrong turn; the road ended in a sandy track with oak trees. There was a small house with a high lorry parked in front that put it in the shade. The lorry had its sprig of broom too, jutting out from the radiator grille.  It was a shock to see the broom up there, above head height, its symbolic powers placed just ahead of the mighty engine; like the shock of a door opening right beside you and the past rushing through it with sudden force. A tradição no dia 1 de maio é colocar ramos de giesta na porta. Protege contra o mal , ou celebra a abundância do final da primavera, ou ambos ao mesmo tempo. O...