The Instructors

Our team reflects the diversity of the Portuguese-speaking world. Our instructors come from different regions of Brazil and Portugal. Besides the qualification, expertise and experience, we all share a huge passion for teaching our language and our culture!

Marcelo Jarmendia: marcelo@brazilinchicago.com

Marcelo is from São Paulo, where he lived until his graduation from high-school. He spent the next year in Florida studying English as second language. Back in Brazil, Marcelo was admitted into the University of São Paulo where he later majored in Social Sciences, with a focus on Sociology, Anthropology, and Political Science. That same year he started teaching Spanish at a number of businesses in São Paulo. Two years later he started teaching Portuguese to Spanish speakers, mostly professionals temporally located in São Paulo.

Five years later, still teaching languages but now holding a college degree, Marcelo decided to return to the United States, this time choosing Chicago. Here he has been teaching languages since the third week of his arrival. In addition to his private students, Marcelo has also worked with the Spanish Language Center and the Brazilian Cultural Center prior to starting organizing his own group classes in August of 2006.

Marco Lucarelli: marco@brazilinchicago.com

Marco Lucarelli is a native of São Paulo, Brazil where he lived until the age of 21. He holds a B.A. in Modern Languages and International Studies from Knox College (Galesburg, IL) and has been teaching a variety of foreign languages for the past 14 years in Brazil, France, and the U.S. He specializes in Romance Languages such as Italian, French, and Spanish in addition to Brazilian Portuguese, his native language. Marco is also very active as a translator and interpreter and has earned a diploma from the Université de Nancy in France. Through his expert knowledge of the Portuguese language and his personal commitment to students, Marco engages his classes, transferring his love for the language and culture of his country in the process. His patience, dedication, and modern methodology are among his greatest assets as an instructor. In his own words, “When you study Portuguese you not only gain the knowledge of a new language; but also transport yourself into a different culture. Brazilian Portuguese is charged with the vibrations, harmonies, and flavors that characterize Brazil. Come join us in this journey!”

Maristela Lutz Bastarrica: maristela@brazilinchicago.com

Maristela is from the City of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, in southern Brazil. She moved to Chicago in July 2007 and holds an academic degree in Languages from FAPA (The Porto Alegre College).

Teaching languages is part of her life. Maristela has been working as a teacher since 1999, when she graduated with majors in Portuguese, English, and Brazilian Literature. She has extensive experience in teaching Portuguese to speakers of other languages, as well as teaching English as a second language.

Maristela believes that teaching allows her to continually learn, which is why she has such a passion for teaching languages. She is about to get her Portuguese Linguistics master’s program from UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul) and is writing her thesis on Linguistic Borrowings. In 2008 she started her master’s program at UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago) in Applied Linguistics/ TESOL.

Maristela has been working at Brazil in Chicago since she moved from Brazil. She loves what she does! Her classes are exciting, and fundamentally worthwhile. Maristela invites you to come to the school and learn the language of one of the most fascinating countries in the world.

Carla Alves da Silva carla@brazilinchicago.com

Carla is a proud native of Rio de Janeiro, where she has lived most of her life. She holds a dual B.A. in English & Portuguese, an M.A. in American & English Literature and is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Portuguese & Brazilian Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Passionate for teaching, she has a long and solid experience teaching ESL in Brazil. Since 2007, Carla has been using her experience with communicative language teaching in her Portuguese classes in the USA.  Carla is a creative teacher who applies interactive and experiential methods to her instruction.  She is a hands on, heads up instructor whose main goals are to engage her students and prepare them for real life language usage,

Iris Vilares iris@brazilinchicago.com

Iris was born in France, daughter of a Portuguese father and a Dutch mother. She lived most of her life in Portugal except for her final year of her Biology degree, when she decided to go to Amsterdam. Back in Portugal she did a Masters in Mathematics applied to Biology. She then entered in a PhD program in Neuroscience and decided to do her PhD project here in Chicago, at Northwestern University. She has been living in Chicago since January 2009 and started teaching at Brazil in Chicago in March 2009. Teaching was always one of her dreams and she loves talking about the language and culture of Portugal!