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Brazil–Doani Emanuela

Doani Emanuela Bertan is one of a kind. She’s an educator who found her calling after graduation. It dawned on her that she wanted to help students with Special needs, especially those with impaired hearing. To pursue this, she took up a course on LIBRAS – the Brazilian Sign language. Since 2008, she has been a bilingual teacher at EMEF Júlio de Mesquita Filho – a school with a high number of deaf students. Here, she works with other teachers & interpreters who are proficient in LIBRAS and seek to empower the students with their commitment and ingenious efforts. For the same, she also made it to the Top 10 finalists in the Global Teacher Prize. Ranjitsinh Disale has shared a portion of his winning proceeds from the prize money, and chosen Doani to be a partner in Brazil for the Ranjitsinh Disale Foundation

DRIVING FORCE

Growing up, Doani remembers her home bustling with two sounds: her mother’s sewing machine and her mother passing on valuable life lessons, one of them being ‘learning doesn’t take up space.’ Doani had chosen a cultural world that was starkly different from her reality, when she started on this journey she formed a student & teacher bond with her first and best deaf friend. She was always driven by wanting to do more for her students, which gradually grew to an impactful collaboration with Sala8 as it went beyond the classroom and helped other families too. For her, she has stood true to the “If you want to transform society, invest in children”.

That has always driven her to explore multiple ways in which she could innovate and make education interesting for deaf students. For them, learning isn’t the same as any other student. The task of learning a language that isn’t in their mother tongue, a language they aren’t masters of becomes the real challenge. This led her to innovating and collaborating with a YouTube channel where she hosts online tutorials for students with impaired hearing.

IMPACT

Doani started the video tutorials as part of answering doubts and concerns for students at first. When they were responding well to them, this guided her into churning out full length bilingual classes which gained momentum outside her school too.

She started believing that the technology was helpful in ways more than one. Limitations of printed materials was done away with, classes became free to access, promotion of LIBRAS as an inclusion tool was also made clear. They were able to achieve what wasn’t possible geographically and infrastructurally.

Students received learning in an engaging format and their feeling of detachment and segregation was also addressed. These lessons reached everyone and the LIBRAS language was welcomed as Doani created videos in a relatable way. The fact that the channel was produced specifically for the students made them feel confident and improved their learning curve. Also, the parents also sought support from the channel to help their children with homework and coursework.

CHALLENGE

High drop out rates was the major obstacle in Doani’s way. This meant a dedicated view into their needs, concerns and interests was needed to ensure student retention. This led Doani and her colleagues to strategize newer ways to overcome this barrier. Another concern with the school was that the students came from a deprived neighbourhood making it even more challenging to cut through and find success. The secret to this lay in creating new learning experiences for them .

Gradually, the quality of this video content also became systematized and professional in nature. The bottom line was she rethought set ways and was present as an anchor for children after collaborating with Sala8 channel.

STEP FORWARD

With over 12,000 subscribers of the Sala8 channel – the students, teachers, families of deaf students along with professionals from the Edu-tech space have taken notice and gotten interested in LIBRAS. It has been accessed in Brazil and 9 other nations already.

With the proceeds received by Ranjitsinh Disale, Doani will be investing in elevating the quality of video production, equipment as conducting a training program. The training program will be for students who want to partake in creating video lessons, the gadgets purchased are going to help the cause in the short term as well long run.