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I've been teaching English for over twenty years with experience in grades 5 through 11. I am currently teaching 6th and 7th grades as well as English III to the Tour Operating Management course at the Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies.
I began my activity at Liceu de S. João do Estoril (S. João do Estoril High School), renamed S. João do Estoril Secondary School. I cherish the best personal and professional memories of those days. I did my in-service training at Escola Preparatória Manuel da Maia (Manuel da Maia Preparatory School), in Lisbon. From there I went to Escola Preparatória da Parede (Parede Preparatory School), renamed Escola de Santo António (Saint Anthony's School), where I returned in September of 1997 after an 18-year absence. During that time I was *on loan* by the Department of Education to the Portuguese Air Force to teach English to their personnel at EMELm - Escola Militar de Electromecânica (Military School of Electromechanics), a joint Army-Air Force school in Paço de Arcos until 1993.
In January of 1998, I completed a Master's in American Studies at the Universidade Aberta (Open University), in Lisbon, after publicly defending a dissertation on NetLearning: The Internet in the Schools towards the Globalization of Knowledge. Given my great identification with the American way and its profound influence in my way of being and in my life, this Master's was 100% tailor-made!
The influence of the English language in my academic life has to do, first and foremost, with a family decision to have my brothers and I study simultaneously in English (mornings), at St. Julian's School, in Carcavelos (where I had the great pleasure of returning last May 6th, after a thirty-some. . . [??] year absence, invited by my colleague, Paula Brandão, to speak to Students and Parents about A Internet no Mundo da Educação - The Internet in the World of Education), and in Portuguese (afternoons) in a public school. And second, with my father's professional duties as a naval officer, which took the family to England in 1956, namely to Greenwich, where he took the Staff Course at the Royal Naval College, in Greenwich, and I started school for the first time ever in my life at the age of six (how difficult those first couple of months were!); and to Washington, D.C., in 1961, where I attended Somerset Elementary School and Western Junior High School, renamed Westland Middle School. I loved both these schools and will specially never forget two teachers: Frank Lyman, my sixth-grade teacher, and Marcia Perlmutter, my Math teacher in the 8th grade.
Marcia and I have been friends ever since. Marcia and Buddy visited us in Lisbon for a couple of hours in May 1992. We showed them the *Judiaria*, the old Jewish neighborhood (as they are Jewish), and the Castle of St. George, with its fabulous view of the city. And I stayed with them in LA (San Fernando Valley) for a couple of days in August 1996. Last Easter Sunday (4.Abr.99), my friend and colleague, Aurora Sousa Martins, and I had dinner with Marcia and Buddy in City Walk, at Universal Studios, in Los Angeles. It's always a rare moment of pleasure to be in their company and it's an extremely pleasant way to catch up on our personal and professional lives, currently updated through email!
This academic background had a very deep and positive influence in me, to the point of making me opt for a course in Germanic Philology at the Faculdade de Letras (College of Humanities), in Lisbon. At the beginning of my fourth year I decided to take a six-week-German course for foreigners at the Wiener Internationale Hochschulkurse of the Vienna University. How useful that turned out two years later!
Private tutoring during the course brought about a taste for teaching which, in turn, led me to *try it out*. I was immediately hooked and haven't left it since!! I love it!!!
Before I got into college, and twice or three times during my career, I did literary and technical translation work in English, French and Portuguese. The most recent translations, in the field of electronics from German into Portuguese, were a great challenge considering I had withdrawn from German years back. A glossary of technical terms (hopefully to be included in this page), compiled by me and my close friend and colleague, Luisa Ribeira Rosa, came out of that extensive work, which was regularly revised by an Air Force officer specialized in the field.
My page is both in Portuguese and English for three basic reasons:
to be able to let friends (many of them made through this fabulous medium called the Internet) and colleagues in Portugal, in the States and elsewhere, know a little bit about myself and my work;
to be able to *share* my work with a larger audience, hoping that it might be useful;
to be able to include work done in both languages.
I was born and live in Parede, in the suburbs of Lisbon. I am married to Jo@o, *the bit* [broken link], who is a computer expert and trainer which, I admit, has had great advantages for my close relationship of several years with computers and more recently with the new technologies. We have two boys, Pedro and Miguel [broken links], both attending the school Mum went back to in September 1997. I think this change initially caused a few *existential* problems, perhaps for fear of what they could hear about their mom/teacher and of a tighter surveillance. That feeling didn't last long, because they rapidly understood that there was no reason for anxieties. In fact, we are all perfectly happy with the arrangement. Pedro and Miguel are both hooked on computers – a *disease* that seems to run in the family! – not only for entertainment, but also for personal and academic reasons.
In October 1998, my book NetAprendizagem: A Internet na Educação (NetLearning: The Internet in Education) [broken link] [new link] was published by Porto Editora. I hope it will help k-12 teachers who want to start using new technologies in their teaching activities.
Links updated 30Apr2012
Page created Oct1999
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