Stay & Assist at our School & Gain a TEFL

The Escola Casa do Mar (ECDM) hosts 10-15 volunteer English teachers at houses in Santa Teresa and Vidigal, teaching 120 students, free of charge, at 4 sites across Vidigal, Rocinha and Mandela 1 (Zona Norte). We offer a 100% refund for cancellations. So you can book a stay with us. Have a phone call with James, our Program Director, and if the volunteering experience is not for you, then cancel. (We're unable to share links and make calls outside of the app until a booking is made). The space Classes are conducted in small groups, with an average teacher:student ratio of 1:3. You will make a meaningful contribution in three low-income favelas, and appreciate the great sense of community in these neighbourhoods. “Tamo Junto!" If you don’t speak English, please get in touch, we are open to your ideas about workshops. In the past we have hosted mechanics, financial planners, and academics who have led activities in Portuguese for our kids. Sharing one of our beautiful houses with a dozen of your fellow volunteers, you’ll live in community, with everyone united in a shared mission at the school, and eager to enjoy the beach, go out to dance, and embrace life in Rio de Janeiro. You can choose to live at our charming 19th-century house in Santa Teresa, Rio's bohemian, hilltop neighbourhood, and spend your evenings and weekends lounging by the house pool and running wild and free. Or choose to live inside Vidigal, Rio’s safest favela, at Casa do Mar, a glass-fronted house opening out directory onto the rainforest, with uninterrupted views of the ocean, and monkeys playing in the canopy. This is truly a volunteering experience, as opposed to a working experience, with plenty of time to explore the city and shift into vacation-mode. You will not be expected to do any class prep or admin work outside of class hours. We employ two long-term teachers (including a now-fluent former student), who know all our students well, providing much needed continuity to our classes. By assisting in our classes, you allow us to bring down student:teacher ratios (1:3 is our goal), speeding up our students' progress by making the lesson more student-focused. While there is no pressure to design classes yourself, we greatly value the ideas that come from the 10-15 volunteers who stay with us each month from all over the world, and we are always excited to improve our curriculum. Our classes are 100% free for everyone to attend and are held in (safe) favelas, where paying for a class would not be an option. Outside of the school, we have wine & cheese nights, churrascos, movie nights on the outdoor projector, weekly trips into nature (Parque Nacional do Tijuca; surfing at the beach; hikes, and much more), alongside trips to the opera, samba and baile funks (favela parties). Everyone is invited to everything, there are no cliques. And just being you is enough. IS THIS PROGRAM FOR YOU? An important component to our Teaching Director’s job is to determine how each volunteer can be best used in the classroom, depending on their language proficiency and teaching experience. She also plays an important mentorship role, facilitating conversations between volunteers after class as they discuss what went well and what could be improved for next time. Many of our volunteers have extensive experience working or volunteering in theatre, art, music, and sport. But others have never before taught in a formal setting. Some are fluent Portuguese speakers, while others speak no Portuguese. The program is also designed for participants who have already completed a TEFL certificate, and are interested in gaining classroom experience and building contacts in the language teaching industry in Rio. We welcome participants of all ages and backgrounds: high school graduates and college students interested in becoming ESL teachers, professionals considering a change in careers, and travellers looking to step into community life. TEACH Our Teaching Schedule: Some of our participants work or study online while staying with us and are unable to make every class. This is totally fine, and thanks to our low student:teacher ratios, classes can still go ahead with teachers absent Monday: Methodist Church - Rua 14 Vidigal 4:00pm - 5:30pm Kids 5:30pm - 7:00pm Adults Tuesday: Universal Church - Rua Principal Vidigal 6:00 -7:00pm Wednesday: Favela Bilíngue, Benfica: Conversation Class 18h00 - 20h00 Thursday: Universal Church - Rua Principal Vidigal 6:00 -7:00pm Friday: Methodist Church - Rua 14 Vidigal 16h-17h30 (Children) 17h30-19h00 (Adults) Saturday: CSECR, Rocinha Rocinha - from 13h30 - 17h00 Our Partners: At each of our four teaching sites, we partner with a community-led organisation embedded in their neighbourhood. Vidigal: We use the rooms above two churches for classes, and benefit from their networks to attract students. Rocinha: We bring our teachers to CSECR, Rocinha on Saturdays to teach 40 children at this wonderful school reinforcement program. Mandela 1 (Zona Norte): Favela Bilíngue is a community project set-up by Marcio Carlos De Oliveira who had a successful career in tourism, and has now returned to his community to help others develop their careers with English. Le Consulat Général de France à Rio de Janeiro: In June 2024, we received a donation of used printers, ink and computers from the French Consulate, Rio de Janeiro. . OUR TEACHING PHILOSOPHY We are inspired by the University of Southern California's Professor Stephen Krashen's "Theory of Second Language Acquisition": an overfocus on grammar slows progress and demoralises language learners. Put simply, learning happens best through exposure to input that is both compelling and comprehensible. For our standard adult lessons, we choose topics that are relevant and interesting for our students to encourage participation and discussion; including; emotional development, current events and global issues. Even for beginners, we aim to get students reading very simple texts where, with context and encouragement, they can understand at least 80% of the content. This method allows them to assimilate more vocabulary this way without over-exerting themselves and getting demoralised. Conversation-led classes are also a crucial part of the curriculum, enabling students to express themselves in English and learn conversational basics that may be applicable in their work or personal life. Our kids range in ages from toddlers to teens, and we aim to turn their energy and interest into a constructive and encouraging activity that they enjoy and learn from. The kids meet our volunteers from around the world and form bonds with people whose paths may never cross, offering a beautiful cultural exchange.Taking away the fear of the unknown when learning a new language and meeting new people is important to our lessons and one that hopes to give the children confidence in forming future connections. We try to incorporate movement, sports, games and activities into the classroom, with a monthly baking class, and a monthly theatre day. Having fun and making the classroom as close to real life as possible is highly conducive to good language learning. THE (OPTIONAL) TEFL CERTIFICATE A 120-hour TEFL Certificate is the globally-recognized pre-requisite qualification for tens of thousands of jobs in ESL teaching, in-person and online. Participants can complete the course within 20-25 hours, as the World Tesol Academy factors in 5 hours of extra study time for each hour of module completion. The certificate is highly intuitive and most participants can dive straight into the modules without outside study. We encourage those who choose to take the TEFL certificate to use a rainy day for this. Aside from being an important hoop to jump through in your journey into ESL teaching, the TEFL gives a strong grounding in core grammatical concepts. This is very useful for native speakers who have never studied grammar. OUR HOUSES: Santa Teresa House: You will be hosted at Casa Insanta, a charming 19th-century house in Santa Teresa, Rio's bohemian hilltop neighbourhood. You will be sharing a spacious, air-conditioned room with just three other participants, that opens up onto terraced gardens. These gardens offer sweeping views of the city, a dining area, a swimming pool, a volleyball court, a snooker table and a Churrasco pit. The house is in Largo do Guimarães, with its bars, cafes, and famous art-house cinema. It is the busiest and safest part of Santa Teresa, with a tourist police station. You can walk around here without concern. Inside the house there is a fully equipped, rustic, country kitchen, and large, open-plan living room. Artists, writers and university students live in the neighbourhood’s crumbling colonial mansions and chat away the afternoons at the cafes that spill out onto the cobble-stoned streets. Santa Teresa is perfectly located to jump into the whirl of the city and then to retreat from it at nightfall.Ubers are very cheap in Rio and it’s just a 10-minute $3 uber to Centro’s parties and Zona Sul’s iconic beaches. Share a taxi to the beach with a couple of other volunteers, and it’ll be cheaper than a bus. Casa do Mar, Vidigal You can also choose to stay at our pousada in Vidigal in a glass-fronted shared room opening out directory onto the rainforest, with uninterrupted views of the ocean. There’s a 75 step walk down from the road but that’s a price worth paying for hearing waves hit the shore instead of road noise. Here we have a community of 10-12, digital nomads, international graduate students, Brazilians and volunteer English teachers living together in 4 private rooms, a 6-person shared room, and a 4-person shared room. All profit from house rentals funds the administration of the NGO. There is always someone ready to share a coffee or beer, climb a mountain, jump in a waterfall, take the house surfboards down to São Conrado or Leblon, or head out dancing. Some rooms have kitchenettes, but all are welcome to use the well-equipped shared communal kitchen. The house is maintained by Victor, the house manager, recipient of the “Sweetest Carioca Award, 2024”, who looks after all the guests, keeps the house very clean, fixes anything that goes wrong and organises regular churrascos for everyone at the house. IS VIDIGAL SAFE? Praia do Vidigal (The Sheraton Hotel’s beach) is at the base of the community, and Ipanema/Leblon is just 5 mins away by bus or Uber. Vidigal is Rio’s safest favela, there is no petty crime here of the kind you’ll find in Ipanema and Leblon. You can leave your phone on a table when out at a busy bar and come back with it still there. Vidigal was pacified in 2011 and the gang and the police continue to cooperate. You could make an argument that it’s the safest place in Rio. Please google “Vidigal Safety” and there are many websites that corroborate this. The community is used to tourists with most people working directly or indirectly with tourism and all the Dois Irmãos hikers passing through on Mototaxis everyday on their way to the trail. Casa do Mar is well known in the community for our free English classes and while you stay here you can participate in Vidigal’s rich cultural life: There are two fantastic theatres here which feed many of the telenovelas; fun bars and wild baile funk parties, boxing & jiu-jitsu gyms, the Dois Irmãos trail on your doorstep, and the best Sushi and Pizza in Rio! PLAY Outside of the program you’ll have plenty of time to run wild and free. On weekends, we’ll take you on super cool hikes, scrambling up mountains and jumping in waterfalls. During the evenings, we’ll point you in the direction of samba bars and keep you up-to-date with Rio’s neverending festival calendar. This is also your chance to pick up surfing, beach tennis, volleyball, yoga or circuit training with all the free beach sports offered along Copacabana and Ipanema beaches. WHAT DOES THE PROGRAM COST? This is truly a volunteering experience, as opposed to a working experience, with plenty of time to explore the city and shift into vacation-mode. You will not be expected to do any class prep or admin work outside of class hours. We employ two long-term local teachers (including a now-fluent former student), who know all our students well, providing much needed continuity to our classes. In the classes you will not have more than three-four students. Our classes are 100% free to attend and are all in the city’s low-income communities where paying for a class would not be an option. We generate no income from the classes and receive no regular outside support. At Casa Insanta, Santa Teresa, to cover the cost of staying in a city-view four-bed dorm with daily housekeeping, breakfast, activities, and private taxi transfer to and from all projects, we ask for a contribution of 100 BRL. The nightly price for a good hostel. If you choose to stay in Vidigal at Casa do Mar, the price is 70 BRL (before AirBnB fees) the nightly price for a good hostel in the Vidigal area. TO LEARN MORE Please confirm a stay with us. You will then be able to make a booking with us. You can cancel the stay with a 100% refund if you do not want to proceed. We have a 100% flexible cancellation policy.