Education & Society — Closing the Gaps So the House Can Keep Being Built

In Brazil, education is tightly bound to a family's income. Good schools cost money, because the good schools are the private ones. The lower-middle class works hard, often two jobs, just so their children can attend a private school. And those who cannot manage even that are left with the public system.

There, much is missing, and what is missing most often are teachers. Sometimes because there isn't enough money to fill every post. Sometimes because a teacher falls ill and no one replaces them. A maths teacher is absent for six months. A class goes a whole year with no history and no geography, because the positions could not be filled. Low pay wears away at motivation, and so the classroom becomes a place where hardly anyone receives attention. Many teenagers sit with a single teacher in an overcrowded room. Whoever falls behind finds no hand reaching back to pull them up.

That is why our work always begins with an assessment, an avaliação. We want to see where each teenager truly stands before we move forward together. Only then can we close what has been left open. It is not about racing through the curriculum, but about laying the foundation again, brick by brick. And the same need surfaces again and again: reading and writing with fluency. Where that foundation is missing, small gaps become chasms.

For me it has been beautiful to watch how tiny steps turn, over time, into real improvement, until even the grades begin to change. That is exactly what we mean when we speak of education. Not simply finishing tasks, but closing the gaps so the house can keep being built, instead of collapsing one day onto its own holes.

The reality of public schools

In Brazil, the lower-middle class fights day after day for a better future for their children. They work hard just so their children can attend a private school, because they know how little the public system has to offer.

The conditions in most public schools are harsh. Teachers who are poorly paid and often discouraged. Classrooms that barely offer the essentials. Fights are part of everyday life. And far too early, teenagers leave school because money is short at home and they have to help out or bring in income. This is the reality the young people carry with them when they come to us.

We were given the chance to run a project in three public schools in our neighbourhood. During that time, the school leadership said that what would help them most were before- and after-school programmes. That is where this work begins.

The gaps we see

The gaps we see in the teenagers are fundamental: fluent reading, grammar, maths. Again and again, lessons are cancelled because teachers are missing. At home there is no quiet place to study. Many carry the household, help out, bring in income, because money and support are short. So little room is left for learning on their own, and the very self-study that should make up for what was missed simply falls away.

What a tutoring session really looks like

When the teenagers arrive for a lesson, it is already prepared. We work with a yearly plan and very concrete goals, and each hour builds on the one before, so that a real learning process can take shape. It is not only about finishing tasks. It is about rebuilding the instruction that was missing from the ground up, so that what was lost can be made up, and the teenagers can finally keep pace in today's lesson, because they were able to close the gaps.

Theatre in public schools

The project leadership asked the school how we could support them. The answer was clear: many teenagers carry a low sense of self-worth, and the school wanted a project that worked on exactly that. I mentioned that I am an actress and could offer a theatre project. The idea was welcomed, and so a programme grew around a single great question: Who am I? What do I carry in my suitcase for the journey through this life? What language, what talents travel with me? What can I do?

And then, quite simply: stand up, play something in front of the others, be brave. When, as a trainer, I spot a talent or notice how someone carries themselves, and I reflect that back to them as a compliment, the teenagers are often deeply moved. I have the feeling that many of them rarely experience this at home, being seen and being heard, simply because life asks so much of their parents and leaves little time for the children.

I also build, very deliberately, on how theatre can be used in everyday life. How do you give a presentation at school? How do you stand? What do you have to say? What technique helps to take the fear away? Whoever learns these elements can stand before others with more confidence and experience their own effectiveness, because they have something to say. Often I will say to someone who talks a great deal during the lesson: listen, you have so much to say and to give, bring it in now, because I believe we need your story. And then they are quite astonished. But every person has a story to tell, and that is exactly what I want to draw out.

A small picture of a long road

A student came to the lesson for the first time and did not read aloud what she was meant to read, but asked the teacher to do it for her. The teacher accepted that and built trust step by step. In the beginning, the girl hid herself away and could not look anyone in the eye. By the end of the first lesson, she began to read on her own, out loud, in front of the group, and she could do it. These small steps, from trust to speaking up to finally opening oneself, are a great reward for us as volunteers.

But I want to say, very deliberately, that success is a difficult word in this work. It takes a long road. Much has already been lived and tried, and now further, new impulses are needed before a life takes flight. It is many small impulses that lead a young person to believe in themselves and to want to take a different direction. That is why success over such a short time is not a good word to measure by. What it takes, above all, is plenty of breath and plenty of perseverance.