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 It is the huge American flag that gets your attention and startles you when you first walk into this tidy and inviting one story yellow building that is Michigan School. I've never seen such a huge flag. It practically takes up one whole wall in the reception area. Located on a narrow street in the center of Capivari, a small hick town in the interior of São Paulo state,
Michigan School was once a private house. The wave like mosaic pavements in front of the building and the white fence add to the charm of the scene. And inside underneath that flag in the reception area sits Karina Betin, the school secretary welcoming all to this small corner of the USA. English is the only language that you hear, and because Karina speaks well, she can help students with the software in the laboratory, and speak to students in English outside the classroom. She is also a student in one of the advanced classes. But my eyes go back to that big flag. "My American mother sent that to me," says Susi in her impeccable American accented English. "We only teach American English, and we teach American culture, too. We even have cooking lessons on occasion and make American food." A tall, attractive and vivacious woman in her late 30's, Susi and her husband, Luis were born in Capivari and never planned to become owners of an American oriented English school. But providence had other ideas and their path would take them from Capivari to the United States and back and would lead them to Michigan School. Everybody knows Susi. And they all want to study with her at Michigan School. Some have already studied with her. Here in the small town of Capivari, also known as "Land of Poets", everybody wants to learn English. Senhor Cabral, whose wife owns the gift shop, Loja da Leninha on the corner, two blocks off the square, says he was in Susi's first adult class. In the Livraria e Papelaria shop, a bookshop and stationery store across from the square, everyone stops to listen when my Brazilian friend and I start speaking English. As I start writing a note in English in the shop, Márcia, one of the clerks, says to my friend in Portuguese "she can write so fast in English!" My friend says "Of course, she is American. It's like you can write fast Portuguese." The other clerk, Renata says she wants to start studying English, and thinks she wants to study with Susi. In this period of history in the 21st century, with the pervasiveness of American culture, with satellite television beaming CNN live into the remotest places on the planet, with American movies being shown in every corner of the word, everyone is learning English or planning to. Even in the smallest shops I go into, I find English students and potential students. In the shops they tell me that Susi's is the best school around. Though there are other English schools in town and they could study anywhere, they want to study at Michigan, Susi's English school Michigan, where American English is taught. Here in the interior of São Paulo state two hours by car from the city of São Paulo, where sugar cane is growing for miles around, here in this charming small town where the colonial buildings and houses are painted pastel colors, Susi and Luis Datti and their team are teaching English to children, adolescents, adults and senior citizens. Susi and Luis have brought a bit of the United States, its language and culture, to this corner of Brazil. This part of Brazil was developed in the 19th century during the coffee boom. Today sugar cane, from which sugar and alcohol are made, is the main agricultural activity and a major industry. Other industries include steel, textiles, chemicals, and furniture. Located 126 km west of the city of São Paulo, Capivari is called the "Land of Poets" because two famous poets, Rodrigues de Abreu and Amadeu Amaral, known throughout Brazil, were born here. Flávio Carvalho, the Secretary of Culture says Capivari has for two years won the national poetry competition. In addition to national competitions, there are poetry competitions every year in the schools here. Poetry is promoted widely and many people, not only students, are writing, reading and thinking about poetry. The city also takes pride in being the birthplace of Tarsila do Amaral, a major figure in the modern art movement in Brazil in the early part of the 20th century. There are busts of these three illustrious citizens, the two poets and the artist, in the big town square where tropical plants and trees grow in abundance. In a small area in the middle of the square, vendors are selling ice cream, T-shirts, and souvenirs. It's very lively. But the rest of the square is peaceful and quiet. It's a good place to find a quiet bench under a tree, sit down, relax and contemplate writing a poem. And with the busts of the poets there for inspiration, there is no telling what you might come up with. Susi grew up here, happily in a large and loving family. When she went to Grand Rapids, Michigan as a high school exchange student in 1985, she found a second family, a true American mother and father as loving as her Brazilian family. She spent a year there. "Right away I became one of their children. My American mom, Sandra, is a wonderful woman and my dad is a great man. I have two American sisters, Andrea and Marsha and an American brother, Keith. I had no doubt that I was and still am a part of their family as they are a part of mine. My Brazilian and American families are all the same to me, and they have both always given me love and encouragement." says Susi with a smile on her face realizing how lucky she is to have two wonderful families. Every year Susi and Luis take their children. Rafael 9 and Gabriela 3, to spend the Christmas holidays in Michigan with her American family. They spend over a month in the USA. They enjoy soaking up American culture and lifestyle in addition to buying new materials for the school. The children speak English like American children. Rafael, a bright, chess playing, personable 9 year old says he could eat a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts a day while he is in the States. "I have been to the United States 9 times", he proudly tells me. I think I'm speaking to an American child when I speak to him. Not only have the children been coming to the United States every year since they were born, but the family only speaks English at home in Brazil. They also watch American movies and television. "Friends" is a particular favorite of Rafael's. Rafael continues in his rapid fire English, "I learned English with my mom and dad because they always spoke English with me since I was a little baby. When my mom, dad and my little sister are together in our house we only speak English. If someone else arrives, we drop English and speak Portuguese. We don't want people to think we are snobs." "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 "Michigans". 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." In Capivari, you can watch American TV, CNN, all the programs and sitcoms through Direct TV. "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 its 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." It's 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" Rita Shannon Koeser is a freelance writer who specializes in the history and culture of Europe and Latin America. She has been a Brazilophile since her first visit to Rio de Janeiro many years ago. Rita can be reached at
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