2007 Education Leadership Award Dinner Speech - Fernanda de Carvalho Cirilo

Fernanda de Carvalho Cirilo
Fernand Braudel Institute Reading Circles Graduate
Education Leadership Award Dinner, New York, New York, June 11, 2007

When my parents came to São Paulo from Piauí in the Northeast, one of the poorest states in Brazil, they came with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, lots of courage and love for one another.  They wanted to share their love with children and I was born to very loving parents in 1989.  We lived in São Bernardo, a big industrial suburb of São Paulo, where many migrants from the Northeast come to find work.

My mother is very strong and patient.  Together, she and I fought and won the battle to stop my father from spending his salary at bars and to change the company he was keeping with men who did bad things.  My mother told my father he had to choose; the bar or his family.  Faced with the loss of his family my father stopped drinking and began building a house for our family that today we call our fortress.

As a child I often rode my bicycle and played with friends in the neighborhood.  But when I went into the first grade I discovered a new love; the love of words and reading.  I love to read about new things.

But my school in São Bernardo is in a very dangerous area and good teachers do not stay at the school for long.  One year we had five different principals.  Teachers would often call in sick and were absent; we didn’t learn much in class.

But I discovered a program called Reading Circles that held groups after school to read aloud classic books and discuss them.  The young educators of Reading Circles were known to be kind and caring.  I was excited to join Reading Circles in 8th grade.  The first book I read was the famous American novel, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.  In Portuguese it is called Fernão.  I loved the story about the seagull that wanted to fly higher than all of the others but was rejected by his peers for striving to be better.  In school I too wanted to be the best, like Jonathan.  And like Jonathan I felt badly and different from the other children because of my desire and ambition to learn.

But I kept my courage.  I always wanted to go to University, to travel and see the other countries and learn as much as possible.  I always wanted a better future for myself, and one day for my own children.

I came to Reading Circles shy, but now I am a Reading Circles educator and run reading groups with other children from many schools.  There are many great books that we read in the Reading Circle program like Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and The Odyssey by Homer, but I always make sure my group makes time for Fernão.  The story of the seagull that flies high and will not be held back.

Today, I am an engineering student at the University.  My father lost his job but has committed our family’s savings to pay my school fees.  Like Ulysses in the Odyssey I have embarked on a journey of wisdom so I can return to my Ithaca stronger.

Obrigada!