Journal of Experiences: A moment in our lives

What is CLAC?

CLAC (Curso de Línguas Aberto à Comunidade) can be translated into a "Community-Wide Language Couse". It is an institution in which  students who are majoring in Language and Literature at the Federal University are allowed to become teachers and have their own classroom.

In the English departament, we are expected to project moments of reflection, different experiences and critical thinking onto our students. Therefore, we stuty not only grammatical aspects, but racism, feminism, literature, consumerism, technology and society altogether. We have this intetion in order to develop a sense of citizenship and an anayltical look towards what happens around us - and this is an attempt of doing so. 

How is this book related to CLAC?

As stated in the description, my dear reader, these short stories are, for most of my students, the first trial on the movement of experiencing creative writing. These classes I have ministred are for the last semester, what we call "English VIII", when students should graduate.  Due to this, we have studied about literature during October/November and we have read, together, many different types of excerpts from books. Since we have classes on Saturday, it would be impossible to dedicate ourselves into only one text, but this did not impell to develop what I intended to. 

However, not everyone felt the connection we, literature lovers, feel when reading. Therefore, I thought: why not letting them write their own short stories? Actually, I have never had this conection with literature before I was demanded to go under the same experience of writing - and that is the reason now I am starting to dedicate my studies towards teaching literature! See? It could be fun... and it was! I am really proud of my class and you shall see why in the next chapters.

What to expect from this book? 

This is a compilation of short stories inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank - one of the books they have read in class. So, you will find many entires on different diaries. My students will discuss about a day that has caused a great mark on their lives and imerge you, as a reader, to understand the various realities we can face as teachers, students, parents, sibligns or friends. Hope you enjoy!