Teaching Portuguese internationally

Unknown artist

I was born in Portugal in Pega in 1958. Emigration from Pega to France started at the end of 19th century. In the 1950s, the population decreased considerably, they were known as the "Franceses de Pega". In 1963, my parents emigrated to France, to Paris in Fontenay-sur-Bois, where they stayed until the end of the 1990s. There, I started school. I recall my first impression: I didn't know anyone nor the language, the teachers were very welcoming and my school career went really well. My parents thought they wouldn't stay long in France. I went to France when I was 5 and back to Portugal when back when I was 8. The teacher named me Jacques as the closest name to Joaquim. Then, when I went back to Portugal, to Pousafoles do Bispo, the teacher named me Tiago as the closest name to Jacques. I was generally known as Jacques. There was a huge difference in the schooling conditions in France and in my village where there was no heating, just a fire, that we had to fire ourselves. My father migrated first, illegally - "a salto" in Portuguese. My father came to work in beetroot farming with an "invitation letter — carta de chamada" to work and secondly to plant pine wood. To have a second "invitation letter" was very rare. When they moved together, my father went to work in construction and my mother in house keeping. They had chosen this area of France because they knew people there. Their first house was a rented country house with a small fruit and vegetable farm - they moved several times in order to get closer to their working places. My parents were farmers and his father was a shepherd in Portugal. I really enjoyed being outside. I studied in a seminary in Fundão, against my father's will. After that, I went to São José private high school in Guarda. Finally, I studied until 1979 in a teacher training school (magistério in Portuguese), where there were a lot of teachers, so I decided to move to Setúbal, together with around 12 of my friends. My first job was in Vila Nogueira de Azeitão. But before that I was in the army for sixteen months as a driver. I remember that when I was 16 I tried to go to France with the group of friends — to visit my parents — but entrance to the country was blocked because of government regulations from 1974 to 1978 traveled to and from Portugal was made more difficult. Because traveling in a group wasn't that problematic. We needed to show our student card and an introduction letter and were allowed to leave the country. In 1986 or 1987, the superintendent of teaching in France submitted his application for me to work in France, despite that I didn’t really wanted to go. When I arrived in France, I didn’t want to teach in the French school where I first went to school - it is very hard for me to think about that first period when I was away from my parents after 28 years. I wanted a different relation to France now. The Paris area changed radically in landscape and urban growth. During the 1980s, I lived in Nogent-sur-Marne. On the 14th of July people used to go to see the fireworks at the bridge over the Marne. I called this bridge the wooden bridge. My colleagues didn't understand me because it had already been replaced by a modern stone bridge. Most of my colleagues didn’t recall there was a wooden bridge before - "mas eu é que era o estrangeiro" (and I was the foreigner!). I taught Portuguese in several places in France and occasionally took some of the students on study trips to Portugal, e.g. to Vila do Conde, Lisboa, Douro. I wanted to show them the cultural diversity of Portugal. The working conditions in France were different from Portugal. The equipment was better in France, and there was a more multicultural context, with kids from Algeria, Morocco, Italy, which didn’t quite exist in Portugal. Also, in Portugal I used to be part of a team with other Portuguese teachers, while in France I was more isolated and on my own. I also worked in Spain, at the time there was a need for teachers. I was a teacher in Miranda de Ebro, close to Burgos, within a Portuguese community and a Roma community, that was also considered largely Portuguese. There, the Portuguese language was part of the school curriculum which was unusual. After one year, I moved close to France, to San Sebastian to be closer to my child and to teach at a school which was one of the first to have classes in digital (1996). Then, in the late 1990s, I moved to Luxembourg because of my family (my wife is French) and I wanted to move to a French speaking country. My child is an engineer and he works in a Luxembourg company. Since he was a kid he understood that he belonged to two different worlds: the Portuguese and the French. Working abroad, as a Portuguese teacher, is an opportunity to change the ways people understand emigration and the portuguese culture.