Brazilian chronicles and the antiracist teaching of Portuguese in the Sertão of Pernambuco

Résumé

The present article discusses the planning and execution of a workshop on Portuguese Language on the genre chronicle for 9th grade students in a state school in the Sertão of Pernambuco, Brazil. The workshop lasted four hours and took place during the third bimester in 2019. It was part of the activities in the Program of Pedagogical Residence [Programa de Residência Pedagógica] and four residents from the Teaching of English-Portuguese major were the mediators, under supervision of both the Portuguese teacher at the school and the Program coordinator at university. The planning of the workshop articulated knowledge on the genre to principles of decolonial and antiracist pedagogy through the themes explored across different texts by Brazilian writers and through the dialogue between verbal and audiovisual texts. As a matter of fact, the choice of texts was based on the need to develop teaching practices that aim to sensitize students to issues of race and social class as well as to engage them in reflections regarding manifestations of  discriminations, prejudice, racism and processes of subjugation of others through language. The workshop was able to embrace elements of a pedagogy of multiliteracies, prompted by the Common Curricular National Base [Base Nacional Curricular Comum] (2017), and meet demands of a linguistic education that deconstructs practices and hegemonic knowledge, to prioritize diversity and sponsor the understanding of political, economic and social issues in the country and the students’ own backgrounds as citizens.