A Professora Ana Tem Algo para vos Contar: Contos para Professores, Educadores, Pais e Crianças que Algum Dia, Efectivamente, Quererão Crescer

Within this book are stories about Ana, a very differnt kind of English teacher, who began to work in Amadora, in order to have her residency permit renewed -- so that she could remain legal in Portugal, where she, at that time, was studying and writing her PhD thesis.

It was not the job of her dreams, of course, but when she heard that the schools and the children she would work with were very difficult and problematic, she felt ‘something’ whispering to her.

‘Go and teach.’
Ana had grown up with the good old pedagogical films, where the teacher was the magical key to all the problems in his school.

So she thought that the warnings of her colleagues from the university about the troubles she would have were exaggerated, and responded with a warm smile: “And so what?

They are children, they deserve care, attention and love and I will help.”

With the stubborn courage and conservative points of view that she carried inside her Serbian Soul and the warm and sensitive naturalized Portuguese heart, she never dreamed of the real problems and incidents that would happen in her classrooms and she began to worry and to wonder: “How to deal with violence (one of her students tried to push her down the stairs, having noticed a very small problem she had with her legs), racism (oh, yes, racism exists at primary schools too and she described the real case of a white girl, the only white girl among sixteen black children (who studied according to a special “alternative program” made (on purpose?) to gather only the worst, the most problematic, the most complicated, the rejected, the abandoned).

Violence, racism, discrimination, misery, hunger, destroyed families, indifference of certain parents were not the only problems that the Teacher Ana had to face and undergo.

On the other hand, she had to deal with some too liberal, too modern and too “tolerant” parents (who allowed everything, but absolutely everything to their children, being convinced that their little kings and princesses were born to be leaders and that everybody on the planet should listen to their smallest whims as if they were the greatest and the most important things that could save the world).

And, by the way, “tolerance” is frequently a tasteless, colorless and shapeless word, that tries to force us to accept what we intimately don’t like or don’t believe in, just to be “politically correct”.

As a good Balkan girl, she decided to say “NO” to this kind of tolerance.

What should the Teacher Ana do having in her classrooms a lot of overprotected children who don’t play at the schoolyard when it rains outside (“Why, for God’s sake?

They are not made of salt and sugar to melt in the water?”)
”.

What should the Teacher Ana do when her students (at the age of nine or ten) asked her about contraception while she herself, much older than them, while she was a PhD student had a platonic never corresponded love?

It is not wrong to talk about “these things” at school.

But it depends on the way you do it.
Love is about meaning, courage , integrity and not just about a “physical activity” or “stimulating some parts of the body”.

Of course, you may think that the Teacher Ana is conservative or old-fashioned, maybe she is, but she gave to this and to many other topics approached in the book a religious dimension.
Should she speak about religion in secular schools?

Yes!

Unfortunately, Europe is afraid and ashamed of centuries and centuries of its Christian history and identity.

It seems to be more visible within the Western (Catholic or Protestant world) where Christmas and Easter are celebrated, but where the commercial dimension is very dominant and everybody talks about Santa Claus and Easter bunnies and chocolate (which is not wrong as a folkloric and funny part of the festivals), but, wait a second… where is God and where is Soul in all this?

We should speak about God at school, about moral values as well, in a spiritually devastated Europe God and religion are needed.