Translator: David DeRuwe Reviewer: Claudia Sander
What does it mean to educate?
What defines a teacher?
His or her titles?
Technique?
Didactics?
What defines?
Innumerable are the factors,
but there is one indispensable ingredient:
love.
Love for teaching, and also for learning.
It's to insert yourself into another's world
and to let that person enter into your world.
It's to reinvent and, principally,
to have the possibility of transforming,
of moving worlds.
To educate is my life.
It all started four years ago,
when I entered the municipal school system of Porto Alegre,
and my destination was a school in the Lomba do Pinheiro neighborhood,
the Escola Municipal de Ensino Fundamental Saint'Hilaire,
located on the outskirts of our city.
It was a case of love "at first experience".
Love for the school,
the very participative community,
for our affectionate students,
and for the autonomy and respect given to the professionals who work there.
In particular, I'm a fan, a big fan, of my colleagues' work.
I fight the good fight with them everyday
to deliver high quality
public education for our children,
despite all the pitfalls we encounter.
To be a teacher in Brazil is no task for the weak.
I can guarantee you this.
I believe so much in the transformative power of education,
and the pedagogical purpose of Escola Saint'Hilaire,
that my son, Thiago, studies in the school where I teach.
This is his first year, and I'm very excited,
very happy to be able to trust my son to my colleagues,
the professionals or my school,
a public school.
So, speaking of public schools,
in my classroom practices,
I've always applied, in an effective way,
laws 10.639 from 2003,
and 11.645 from 2008.
These laws make obligatory
the study of African and Afro-Brazilian culture and history in schools,
and, also, the question of indigenous culture.
And why am I talking about laws?
Law 10.639, for example, do you know how old this law is?
It's from 2003, people.
It's completed 16 years.
But it's only "contemplated"
on commemorative days.
But we're blacks every day of the year,
and we live year round with bad taste "jokes."
By the way, I talk with my students
about the fact that joking is when everyone is having fun.
If somebody, at a given moment, feels sad, oppressed, or excluded,
then this has another name,
and no type of discrimination and no type of prejudice
should be tolerated.
I'll never forget,
and I've already thanked her,
but, today, I want to thank her in front of all of you.
Come up here, Thayanna.
(Sigh)
(Applause)
We reallly have to applaud
because we think that we'll go to school to teach something, right?
The truth is who learns,
a lot,
is us.
I straightened my hair for 25 years,
but I always worked, I always believed,
I always had my Afro identity
very present.
I've always said to my students
they should believe in their potential and beauty
and they shouldn't let anyone make them believe the opposite.
The point is the person who didn't accept herself, in this story,
was me.
One day, after one of these classes,
turban workshops, like what you see on the screen,
Thayanna told me she loved the workshops, she adored the classes,
and she knew she must accept herself,
but that she still wanted to have hair like her teacher.
Well ...
When we take a blow like this,
we can pretend we didn't hear and go on,
or we can have an attitude.
And that's what I did.
It just didn't make sense
to have discourse different than what I did in practice.
And that was when I started my liberation process.
Liberation and reunion.
Reunion with the little girl, the child, that I had been.
I've heard various stories here,
including the story of Winnie Bueno, that touched me a lot,
talking about school,
saying that, in school, she felt silenced.
And we know that school can be a very cruel environment
for children who are "different."
So,
in this confusion in which various stories came together and intertwined,
I met Kherollen,
a 10-year-old girl,
who taught me and thousands of people
about courage.
Courage that I didn't have when I was 10 years old,
much less a conscience.
After an evaluation of an earlier project,
based on a reflection about the value of diversity,
I asked the students to do a story, an evaluation of this.
This day, I received many short letters, including this one from Kherollen,
and it read exactly like this:
"When they talk about my hair, I get tightness in my chest.
I don't get it.
I can't believe this hurts me so much."
And she ends by asking a question,
"What is it about my hair? I don't even know."
This touched me so much
because it reminded me of my childhood, a girl with a private school scholarship -
it's important to stress here that I'm a light-skinned black woman,
and the racism and prejudice that I experienced my entire life
isn't even a third of what these students have experienced all their lives.
It's important not to talk about pain we don't feel.
In the name of empathy, please.
That day, I had an ex-student -
Come Ginny!
I had an ex-student in the classroom who had gone through the same thing
the year before.
And she read this letter
and got very upset, right, Ginny?
She decided to talk with the class
and what she said was so important,
so motivating,
that she, with her attitude,
of not being quiet in the face of things happening,
played a role in how Kherollen appeared, the next day in school,
with part of her hair down.
This generated a climate of ecstasy inside the classroom.
All the students were saying,
"Kherollen, you're so pretty, you need to come this way to school every day."
Until it was time for recess,
and the nightmare began again.
Kherollen left the safe classroom environment and went to the playground,
and I'm sure all the black women and girls here
will know what I'm talking about.
Returning from recess, Kherollen was crestfallen,
had her hood over her head,
and didn't say a word.
When her fellow students, disgusted, came to tell what was happening,
and wanted to resolve this, I confess to you,
in a very "friendly" way.
Right?
I said, "Guys, this is not the solution, we can't react to psychological violence
with more violence, physical violence, because this doesn't solve the problem."
Then the questioning started, "So, what will resolve it?"
We began to talk with many people
and to research about this, until a great friend -
a kiss for Denise, she's here also. Denise? Raise your hand, Denise.
A round of applause for Denise.
(Applause)
Until Denise sent me an image
of a black girl with black power hair,
that had the following message,
"Free your hair and hold the prejudice."
That was it.
That was what we wanted to say.
Our hair tells a story,
carries all the pride of our ancestry,
and it isn't our hair that has to be held and hidden.
We wanted to hold off the racism, the prejudice,
and the intolerance of people.
And that's what we started to do inside the school,
with the leadership of the students here.
We are Afroativos ...
(Applause) (Cheers)
Now we're talking. Now we're talking.
We're Afroativos, afroactives, because we take action so that changes occur.
We believe in the process of "afrobetization."
Have you already heard this word?
"Afrobetize."
To redefine our history
because books of learning tell us
that we're descendants of slaves.
They don't tell us that we're descendants of African kings and queens,
princes and princesses.
They don't tell us that Egypt is on the African continent,
as it's portrayed in a whitened form,
so that we keep looking for a place of subservience.
They don't tell us that Brazil was the last country in the Americas
to abolish slavery.
They confuse us and don't explain us
that Haiti isn't on the African continent,
and that not every black immigrant is Haitian.
Haiti is in Central America.
Africa ... Africa isn't a country.
Africa is a continent with 54 countries, each one with its own culture,
each one with its own history,
and this is very important because our history
is denied, robbed, and erased,
all the time.
And, inside of the afrobetization process,
we deal also with the question of romanticizing traitors -
hi, Rafuagi -
we deal with the question of romanticizing traitors
who are treated as heroes in our history.
We need to deal with these and other necessary "darkenings."
Have you already stopped to think about this?
How many racist expressions do we use in our daily life?
How long will our blackness have a pejorative meaning?
How long?
We need, and this is a motto of ours,
to afrobetize, decolonize, and free our minds.
The revision of privileges, also, is of extreme importance,
and that we all come together in this movement for change.
We bet on the protagonism and the autonomy of these students,
critically.
Public school is not a mess, OK, guys?
And when they ask me -
because Afroativos is a project that functions with our own resources
and the help of many volunteers -
why I do this,
why I use my own car, my own money,
why I don't sleep much,
and why I don't take Saturdays, Sundays, holidays, vacations,
all I can say to you is that I love,
I believe, and I believe very much.
And I refuse to leave any of these students behind.
Because we are much more than a project.
We are a family.
The Afroativos family.
To see these students showing the world what the outskirts are producing -
Yeah, we've been in Angola, right, kids?
Like the Afroativos calendar
that we put together through research.
I'm very proud of this,
and it only makes me believe that education continues to be the way.
I would like to end with this message from Madiba,
that synthesizes all what I think as an educator.
Education continues to be the best way.
Forward, Afroativos!
Forward! Thank you very much. (Applause) (Cheers)
["Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.]
[We must foster courage where there is fear,]
[agreement where there is conflict,]
and inspire hope where there is despair." Nelson Mandela]