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Meet the Team
Luciana Lage
I teach Portuguese not only because I am a native speaker of the language, but also because I am an expert in it. Teaching Portuguese is a magical process of falling in love again and again with the language, the people, and the culture.
My innate talent with the Portuguese language has been apparent since I was a kid. I excelled in Portuguese classes in school. In college, while I was getting my Bachelor of Science in Business in Brazil, I worked as a Research Assistant in the Business department. There, too, my ability with the Portuguese language was quickly noticed and I became the natural go-to person to review and edit articles written by our Professors. READ MORE>
Larissa Garcia & Taba Theatrical Production
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Larissa Garcia is an actor, comedienne and Brazilian Portuguese instructor born and raised in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. She holds a bachelors degree in both Drama (Federal University of Bahia) and Language (Salvador University), and has been teaching Brazilian Portuguese for 6 years while working as a stage actor for the past 15 years.
Betania Bezerra
I found out about my passion for the Portuguese language while attending middle school in my hometown of Porto Alegre, in the southernmost state of Brazil. During Portuguese classes I was fascinated by my native tongue while most of my classmates despised sitting through an entire grammar class. I realized that not only I had fallen in love with the Portuguese language, but that I was proficient at it.
I was born and raised in a city that has a strong cultural tradition so I enjoyed a diversity of activities like book readings and theater plays. In addition, my mother used to be a Social Sciences teacher so I became attracted to the Brazilian folklore very early on. In 1997, I graduated from an Architectural Drafting and Design school. It did not take me too long to realize that was not my true calling. READ MORE>
Vanessa Agra
Vanessa is Brazilian and has been living in San Francisco, CA for 9 years. She graduated in Psychology in Brazil, and was an elementary school teacher before moving to the United States. While living in Brazil, Vanessa accumulated six years of experience teaching Portuguese and other subjects to 1st- 4th graders. In San Francisco she took a different path and diversified her professional endeavors. But Vanessa has never stopped teaching Portuguese as a second language because of the joy and fun she always finds in the process of seeing someone open up his/her ears and mind into a different language. READ MORE>
Renata Barboza-Murray
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I was born and raised in Pernambuco, Northeast of Brazil. I have been living is San Francisco-CA for almost 4 years.
I have a BA in Translation (English-Portuguese), a specialization course in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), and am working towards an AA in Child Development and Family Studies. I have been teaching for more than 8 years, both English and Portuguese as a second language. My students range from 3 to 68 years old. READ MORE>
Carl Spanoghe
Carl Spanoghe has teamed up with Street Smart Brazil to ensure the company is using the latest technology and web 2.0 marketing methods to reach a larger audience. Carl believes that offering an online community and a large quantity of dynamic information about Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language will add value to Street Smart Brazil's core services. He has used this philosophy in developing StreetSmartBrazil.com to be a great tool for students and non-students alike :) READ MORE>