San Francisco, CA

Well, I know I should’ve written something about my trip to San Francisco before, as I promised to my friends, but I didn't. I could say in my defense that I was really affected by the jet leg in the first two weeks after arriving, or that San Francisco has lots of things to do, not to mention the unstable internet connection a have in the residence club I'm staying in, but the truth is that I’m a really lazy writer. Writer? What am I saying?

I came along with two other air traffic controllers and the flight to San Francisco wasn't perfect because we missed our connection in Dallas, which in some way was good because we could see american soldiers coming from Afeganistan. It doesn't mean that I like war, but it's part of their culture, and it's cool when you are travelling and you have the opportunity to see things like that. Everybody in the concourse clapped thanked them.

I have so many things to talk about San Francisco, but the fact is that I'm not used to walk and here I've walked a lot, so that everyday when I arrive at the hotel, I'm very tired to go downstairs, where I can get a better internet connection. And today isn't different. Then I'll try to tell something else later.

Translation

(From left to right: Fred, Leonardo, Thomas, Renato, Miguel, Salvador, George, Marcelo, Rukhsana, Ana, Kevin, Eliane, Ronaldo, Gabriela, André, Gustavo, Noronha and Brian.)

Last week I had the privilege to meet some very friendly people from the TSA (Transportation Security Administration), ANAC (Agência Nacional de Aviação Civil), Departamento de Polícia Federal and also some colleagues from my own company, INFRAERO, that I hadn't had the pleasure to meet before.

The TSA is a component of the Department of Homeland Security, formed immediately following the tragedies of Sept. 11 and is responsible for the security of the USA nation's transportation systems. One of their functions is to oversee security systems of airports with flights to the United States and as this is our case, a TSA team came to observe Guarulhos.

Four days before their arrival, my boss told me that our security manager needed someone who spoke English to accompany them and help with the language. I told him that I had never done translation before in my life but, of course, I would help. All I could do was to take a look at the terms related to security to familiarize myself with the lexis beforehand, since this isn't my area. In case you don't know, air traffic controllers work with safety, not security.

To my astonishment, on the first day of the visit, the security manager told me that we were going to the auditorium and the superintendent was going to speak in Portuguese about the airport, not only to the TSA team, but also to the ANAC members, some Federal Police officers and the representatives of the airlines involved. And they needed me to translate it simultaneously to English. Ok, it was not that simultaneous because he was going to say something, then stop so that I had time to translate and then continue... Luckily for me, there was someone among the americans who could spoke portuguese, and she agreed to sit beside me to help. Her name is Rukhsana and she lived in Brasília when she was a child. It's thanks to her that I felt more confident and could do the job. But in the end I thought I could have done it much better because my main problem was that I was not able to record everything he said and then I passed only the idea, not literally.

During their visit, I went to places in the airport that I'd never gone before, such as the Federal Police kennel where they train dogs to sniff out drugs in people's luggage which by the way in one of these days I actually could see a dog on duty. It was amazing when the agent planted a bag with drugs amid a bunch of thirty others as a demonstration and it still could find the drugs. After surrounding all the airport perimeter, I realized how large it is. There was a day that we walked through terminals 1 and 2 on the two floors, so they could observe all the luggage entrances and all the access points where passengers are screened before getting on a plane. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I have to confess that in the end my legs and feet were aching all over.

On the last day of their visit, we had an out-brief in a conference room and again I had to translate it in front of a group of people. But by that time after having been talking to them for the whole week, my translation skills had considerably improved. While they talked and expressed their feelings I translated from Portuguese to English and vice versa and although I say so myself, I think I did a great job.

CTP010 Guarulhos - 10 to 28.08.2009

We've finished another course and I'm dropping a few lines to thank everyone who helped us during all these three wearing weeks, specially Rudney and Myron who always took from their precious time to solve not only some technical problems we had, but also some student's hitches.

Besides, I'd like to congratulate our students for their motivation and dedication within these past few days with us. And despite recognizing the need for student's further improvements, I hope this course was a booster in order to reach level 4.

The Power of Cuisenaire Rods

I still can remember my first day shadowing my teacher trainer a few years ago at Guaratinguetá. He started the class taking six or seven colored rods and naming them with chunks of words, then passed the rods around the students, so that every time each student took a determined rod, he or she had to repeat the chunks. In the end, there were seven chunks of words passing around the class and being said all together. Chaos!!! "This guy is crazy", I thought. Then he showed a piece of a movie and asked the students to raise hands every time they heard the words. It worked wonders!!! Despite being in a basic level of English, they could do that! Since then, every time I have some difficult audio, I use this method with my students.

This week I used the rods again, but with a different activity, still learned from Jairo, my teacher trainer mentioned above. I'll try to explain how it works:

After presenting the students all the vocabulary related to airport, I separate the students forming two pairs and two groups of four (12 students). Then I ask the pairs to go out of the room and wait for further instructions. I tell the groups of four that they aren't air traffic controllers anymore, now they are engineers and each group has to build an airport project. I give each group a bunch of rods to build the airport and tell them that the airport has to be safe and profitable. This is very important to say, otherwise air traffic controllers tend to build just runways, taxiways and fancy towers aiming just safety and forgeting about the terminal building, which in these activity would be bad because they wouldn't use all the vocabulary learned. In order to have two completely different airport project I have to say to one group that their main objective is profit and to the other one that theirs is safety. Then I go outside the class and tell the pairs that they are going to buy one of the projects. So they have to write down a questionnaire aiming safety and profit. After fifteen minutes, each pair goes to each project and start asking questions, then they exchange places. In the end, the ones who are going to buy the project have to decide for the best option and why they have chosen one or another.

Even the quieter students talked a lot, but the funniest part was that in the middle of the activity I had to ask them three times to have a coffee break. Great!! Isn't it?

The Last Days of Krypton

Since childhood, I always liked the story of superman, but I always thought that it would be great if Hollywood produced a movie telling the story of Krypton. What caused the destruction of man of steel's birth planet and why Jor-El didn't come along with his newborn son. Well, Kevin J. Anderson has already written this story and what I can say for a while is that after reading the first chapter, it seems to be a real page-turner.

Home alone, with my children...

After long three weeks, another CTP010 has finished, but this time it was Fabrícia who was out there teaching and I was the one who had to look after the children. I really tried to write about it three weeks ago just after my wife left home towards Rio de Janeiro to teach her first English class ever, but since then things got completely busy here.

Yes, my better half is not only an Air Traffic Controller like me, but she is also learning how to teach Aviation English. As you can see, we have a lot in common. And talking about stuff in common, we have a five-year-old girl and a one-year-old boy. Naturally, I can't help saying they're wonderful children, but what impressed me in these days was that despite being sad because they had their dedicated mother miles away, they behaved incredibly well.

At least this time I was luckier than Fabrícia because as Rio is near São Paulo, she was able to come home on the weekends, so that I could have some rest. Still, being a single father for three weeks was much harder than teach English for the same period.

One more terrible morning at HASP

Yesterday I had to renew my ATC Medical Certificate at HASP (Aeronautical Hospital of São Paulo), which we, as Air Traffic Controllers, have to do every year.

When my wife, who is an ATCO as well, told me that they had a WI-FI installed, I thought it would be great if I took my laptop with me, so that I could do something on the internet while waiting for them to print my certificate after having finished all the examinations. I still can remember the last day I went there and finished all my exams at 10:00 am and then I had to wait for the certificate till 1:00 pm doing nothing.

When I arrived there, approximately at 6:30 am, I parked my car, took just my book with me and left the laptop inside the car hoping that I could use it later. In the hall, the ATCOs-pilots-and-flight-attendants-well-known-self-opinionated-arrogant-old woman was already distributing forms and passwords for the comers, when I heard one pilot asking her if he was supposed to fill in the form beforehand and she rudely answered "just take it, wait for the passwords on the display and do whatever you want". "6:40 am and this woman is already stressed out, this morning will be endless", I thought. Unfortunately, sometimes effrontery seems to be part of military orientation.

Nowadays, in order to do the exams faster, they give us two passwords, an individual and another one for each group of 10. Every time a group is called, everybody in it has to go to the room at the same time, so that the doctors can look at us as fast as they can and then call the other group. After taking my form and passwords I sat down and as soon as I started reading my book, the display with that disturbing call began to work. Only at 9:30 am, I was asked to have an X-ray and then take blood and urine samples, then I was free to have breakfast before continuing the examinations. I ate much faster and less than I usually do in order not to miss the next call which was from the cardiology. Afterwards, I waited, waited and waited... But this time I had a book to read, so I read, read and read for a long period til I heard someone asking that old woman what happened with number 86, my group number. And being ill-mannered again, she said that probably they had called us and we hadn't heard it because we never pay attention. I couldn't believe in what I was hearing , so I stood up and asked her, trying to be polite because my Medical Certificate was at stake, how it would be possible with 10 people looking at that display! Then she said that she would see what had happened. Fifteen minutes later, one of us went to look for our file when he finally found it laying down on the floor in one of the rooms. Our examinations restarted and we finished approximately at 12:00 am, surprisingly at the same time of the others who seemed not having had the same problem. Probably they had had other ones...

When I thought it was finished, I remembered that I had to see the shrink and they had completely forgotten about it. It's really weird in the aviation world why only air traffic controllers have to see a psychiatrist every year while pilots and flight attendants don't, even after what happened on 9/11 attacks, not to mention that accident in Goiania two months ago when a pilot flew a small aircraft intentionally towards a mall killing himself and his own daughter!

I tried to warn that woman about my situation, but in vain since she didn't pay any attention to me. So I went to ask the lieutenant in charge if I needed to see the srink. I thought maybe the authorities realised that there is no point in visitng a psychiatrist just once a year. Astonishingly he had to ask someone else because he didn't know the answer. And the answer was "yes, you have to see him, but as he has already gone, you can come back tomorrow morning".

But what I'm talking about? Hitches like these occur everyday at HASP! Let's see what is going to happen next year!

Faster? Impossible...

When I first heard about the CPE exam preparation course at Seven Pacaembú on Fridays evening I thought it would be impossible for me to sign up for it since I live in Guarulhos. Then, just out of curiosity, I went to google maps to check the distance and it said:

23,4 kilometres

approximately 33 minutes

33 minutes!!! Google is crazy!!! I thought. It merely ignores that I have to drive through Dutra and then via Marginal Tietê to join Pacaembú Avenue at 6 pm in the middle of the rush hour on Fridays, when everybody runs desperately to live São Paulo and go somewhere quieter!!!

Well, as I absolutely needed to try something different, I decided to run the risk of crawling all my way to Seven and I finally enrolled for the course. But for my surprise, at this time all the traffic are coming on the opposite direction. So the first day I went to the School, it took me just 35 minutes!  And since then the journey takes only up to 45 minutes, which is really fast considering that I am in São Paulo.

It's even faster than writing this post! But it isn't a fair comparison...

CTP010 Brasília - 09 to 27.03.09

One more CTP010 has finished and I can feel that rewarding sensation again!

The Aviation English Course lasted for 3 weeks, 6 hours a day as usual, and it's really amazing to see how our students could improve their English, not to mention their positive feedback in the end. Nevertheless, I still think we could have done it better, working more on pronunciation, presenting vocabulary in more different ways and practising more grammatical structures regarding checking, confirming and clarifying information strategies. Yes, I know I have to be patient since CTP010 is a new course at INFRAERO and it is still evolving in our minds. We, as instructors, are still learning how to prepare classes and even how to teach. Sometimes we do it well, sometimes not, and that is part of the course and teachers' evolution. But I have new ideas emerging in my head and I know I have to write them down before forgetting them all, so that next time I can put them into practise.

Another interesting thing about this specific course was the fact that as we had a colleague shadowing us, I had the opportunity to play teacher trainer for the second time in only one year being a teacher, which I think I was able to do much better this time because the TTC I took in last January was still fresh in my mind.

And last but not least, it was a privilege to see, after almost ten years, colleagues from the Air Traffic Controller class of 1999, which I was part of. Besides, it was a great honour to be invited to help all of them to learn a bit more about English.

Why in English?

Well, before people start asking "Why does a Brazilian write in English?” I'll write this blog in English because that is the primary reason I am writing it. I explain:

After taking a TTC (Teacher Training Course) in São Paulo last January, I realized that being an English teacher is as rewarding as being an Air Traffic Controller. Ok, of course I'm talking about satisfaction! Because financially speaking, it should be better for both.

The course at Seven was really good as well as the teacher trainers, not to mention the interesting books they suggested for reading, some of them I fortunately already had. But what came to my attention was the fact that the next step to become a better teacher was that I have to do the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults), but to be fully prepared for this challenge, I really need to study more English and then I decided to study again to get the CPE (Certificate of Proficiency in English). Yes, I tried it before in 2005 but unfortunately I failed for I hadn't studied as I should.

The CPE exam consists of five papers, one of them is "writing", probably the most difficult one to practice since I'm not used to writing, not even in Portuguese! Then I decided to follow my teacher's advice and do what I've been doing for the whole week: trying to come up with something to start this blog!

Believe me, it is really, really hard!