“Our school wasn’t the first in my town, but it was the first English school with an emphasis on conversation”, Susi tells me. “Our method attracts many students, and we now have the largest number of any school in the area. We have approximately 250 students, and we are growing very fast.” But it wasn’t always like this. Susi thinks back to when her school was in her mom’s kitchen. They used a partition, and while her mom was banging the pots and pans on one side of the kitchen, Susi was teaching English on the other side. The good smells that wafted over from the kitchen side to the school side of the partition  were inspiration sometimes for teaching and learning English cooking terms! When Susi returned from her year as an exchange student in Michigan, people started asking her to teach them English. “I rented an empty garage, got some furniture and started my school” , added Susi. In the second semester, Susi had to move her school to her mom’s kitchen because the rent was too high at the garage. She began having more students, and after she married Luis, he convinced her to leave her mother’s kitchen. So “Susi’s School” as it was then known moved from the kitchen to Susi’s small house next to her parents, and she continued  getting more students. Luis, a big friendly bear of a man with a twinkle in his blue eyes was working as an engineer. But in 1992, he was laid off from his job along with 4,000 other employees of his company due to the economic crisis in Brazil. After much indecision,they decided to go to the USA, so Luis could improve his English and become a teacher at the school, too. Luis was a little doubtful about this venture. “I wasn’t too keen at the time and didn’t care that much for English, but Susi and another relative convinced me to do it. We sold almost everything we had, a huge aquarium, and even my bike and my bow and arrows so we could pay for the ticket to the USA and for my English course at Michigan State University” he reminisces. Susi also took English courses at Michigan State. Luis joined Susi as a teacher at  the school when they returned to Brazil in 1993. Though their former students had all gone to new schools, when word got around that Susi and Luis were back in town, all the former students came back. Luis, a quintessential technology whiz, bought a computer and proceeded to computerize their  school. Their little school was now on its way. In 2000 they moved into the building they are in now.

“Why the name Michigan”? I ask Susi. “Is this in honor of your American family who live in Michigan or because you studied at Michigan State University?”, None of these things she tells me. Michigan was the name of the school where she studied English as a teenager in Brazil. It was located  in Campinas, a city close to Capivari.  She studied there before going to Michigan, USA as an exchange student! The owner of the school in Campinas named his school after Michigan State University because he had studied there. Now I’m beginning to think there’s something really really scary in all these “Michigans” in Susi’s life. Years later, the Michigan School in Campinas was sold to a franchise group. Susi became involved with this franchise, and changed her school’s name from Susi’s School to Michigan. Well, my head is kind of spinning now with all these “Michgans”. I wonder to myself what the odds are of finding schools with the name “Michigan” in small towns in the interior of Brazil. I also wonder if somehow, certain place names are connected to our destinies.

“I love the English language and I love teaching it”, says Maria Cecília Schmidt Maluf, one of the popular teachers at Michigan who has studied English in Princeton, New Jersey and has close connections with the USA. She is popular with the students because of her dedication and creativity. Because she loves and is so good with children, she teaches most of the children’s classes. Maria  Cecília, who also directed the school’s Christmas play last year, tells me that when the children’s attention starts flagging, she gets up and sings and dances and runs around the room, plays crazy games or anything else it takes “Their  attention is engaged pretty fast when I do that”, she says.  Susi says “this is typical of our teachers. They are highly creative. This is one of the criteria I look for when I hire teachers” All of the teachers at Michigan are Brazilians who have studied in English speaking countries. Besides Susi, Luis and Maria  Cecília, there is Regiane, a very pretty relative of Susi’s who worked as a nanny for an American family before becoming a teacher. Regiane teaches beginners, intermediate and advanced students, and says the big challenge is always teaching real beginners using only English. As conversational English is the goal in Michigan School, even the beginners are taught only in English. Marcia, the other teacher, is the clown. She is known for her jokes, and as well as amusing her students, Susi says Marcia always keeps the teachers meetings quite lively. She has studied English in Canada and the USA. When I ask Marcia how she keeps up with her English here in Brazil, she says “I like watching Seinfeld”! Here in Capivari, you can watch American TV, CNN, all the programs and sitcoms through Direct TV, which is a cable TV service.

“Why does the Michigan method work so well, so much better than other methods”? I ask Luis. He explains, “At Michigan, the methodology motivates students to think directly in English without translating from Portuguese. Students have a tendency to translate from Portuguese to English, and other methods encourage this. When students think in Portuguese before speaking English, they will want to use expressions and structures in English that only make sense in Portuguese. Therefore we do not use translation” A typical class at Michigan will see the teachers miming and acting a lot in class so that the students understand the vocabulary without having to translate it. The students start to think in English pretty fast this way. Creativity and imagination are hallmarks of Michigan teachers, and depending on the topic to be learned in each lesson, the teacher will talk about that topic  in such a way as to relate it to the students’ everyday experience. Although the method stresses speaking, the students also learn to read, write, and use grammar correctly. As a correlation to all of this, there is a computer lab with specialized software.

The students certainly agree that this method works well. Luciano Pacheco, a 51 year old pediatrician, who is a longtime student at the school and whose wife and daughters have also studied at the school, said he heard about Michigan School and it’s focus on conversation 9 years ago. He says after studying for just three years at Michigan “I went to a conference in Washington, DC where I was able to converse in English with my colleagues from all over the world. I also went three times to New York, and once to London. I was able to speak English well in the hotels, restaurants, malls and stores. It’s a great school with great teachers,and I don’t intend to stop studying at this school” Mayra Schincariol, who is 25, has been studying at Michigan for two years and likes the teachers, the language lab and software. Sabrina Lamamoto said “I’m 16 years old and have been studying at Michigan School for 5 years. I need English for my career, and Michigan’s is the best method for learning to speak”.

All is not always sweetness and light though at Michigan School. Some students bring their problems to school with them, and the teachers wind up being psychologists, as well as English teachers. One of Luis’s students decided to come to his English class one day instead of committing suicide! “He was very depressed and told me  his personal problems. I knew something was wrong  as soon as he entered the classroom because he seemed very tense and nervous. As luck would have it, none of the other students showed up to class that day. So, I talked to  him for hours, prayed with him, and told him to get counseling”, Luis remembers. Luis didn’t see him for a while after that, and then one day the student showed up to class with a big smile on his face. Luis was amazed. He thanked Luis for saving his life. Luis has never stopped wondering about that fateful day. Why hadn’t the other students come to class? Just a coincidence? Or more than this?

Yes, everyone knows Susi, and they know Luis, too. And in both of their capable hands, the state of English teaching is in good shape in Capivari. When the people of the city go into that office with the huge American flag, they’ll continue to find a little bit of the USA, its language and culture there. They’ll find dedicated people having fun doing what they love. They’ll find everyone, students, teachers and staff speaking English. They might even see young Rafael who will greet them with one of his signature expressions or say to them as they leave “See you in a while crocodile” or “goodbye piece of pie”.

The following are Rita's previous articles for the magazine:

• Long Way From Florida ~ The Isle Of Skye, Scotland
• Red Or Blue ~ A Folk Festival In The Amazon