Doani was inspired by her mother to become a teacher. Upon graduation, she realsied that Special Education was her passion, especially working with people with hearing impairment. She took the first step by taking a course on LIBRAS, the Brazilian Sign Language.
Since 2008 Doani has been working as a bilingual teacher in Portuguese and Brazilian Sign Language. The school in which she teaches is in an area of deprivation. At her school, they struggled with high dropout rates so teachers began listening to the needs, concerns and interests of their students. Doani, along with her colleagues began to look for new strategies to optimize learning.
Doani Emanuela Bertan teaches LIBRAS the Brazilian sign language system to her hearing impaired students and began to promote video calls with them to answer their doubts and concerns on the daily classes. These online tutorials grew into fully fledged bilingual video classes, allowing the knowledge to spread outside the school environment. In addition to the use of technology as a tool, they allow flexible learning times and spaces, support parents and families and make possible new educational experiences.
They also helped overcome difficulties such as lack of specific teaching materials, limitations of using printed materials and linguistic regionalisms. All of her classes were uploaded to a YouTube channel and are now free to access. Her school stands out for its high enrolment of students with hearing impairment and teachers who promote LIBRAS as an effective inclusion tool. Since 2017, thanks to the state support, the school offers bilingual classes in pedagogical couples and bilingual video classes are used as pedagogical support material.
Doani's commitment led her to go beyond her formal work schedules and to take advantage of the opportunities that technology allows.
