I spent at least 30 years of my life
traveling the world
to study and search out successful educational experiences
that I could bring back to inspire Brazilian education
and to attempt to answer
some very fundamental questions that we must confront
to change the very negative relationship our students have with their studies.
My mother had a problem during my delivery,
and because of that, I had cerebral palsy.
The doctors informed my parents they should be prepared
because I would have a very challenging life:
I was likely to have difficulty speaking and hearing,
I would certainly have learning disabilities,
and the other problems, my parents would have to help the doctors discover.
So when it came time for me to walk,
my parents discovered that I had a severe problem in my lower limbs.
I began to undergo a series of surgeries
and spent the first part of my childhood in between procedures.
Because of that, I couldn't attend kindergarten,
and I entered the first grade after the school year had started.
At that time,
the doctors and my parents realized
that my speech and hearing hadn't been affected.
I started studying -
thanks to great effort from my parents to get a school to accept me.
The first school said, "No, she won't be able to keep up."
My parents went to the next school
and promised they would help with whatever was necessary
if the school accepted me.
And then two things happened.
First, I was passionate about school
and I loved going to class.
And second, to everybody's surprise,
I quickly closed the gap between me and the other students,
those who had gone to kindergarten
and those who had started at the beginning of the school year.
From that point on, I was always the best student in class.
I decided that I wanted to follow a career in education
because I really wanted
to give back to education the opportunity it had given me.
I decided that I would study literature
because I always loved grammar, the Portuguese language, and literature.
But in the middle of my journey through elementary school,
the teacher called my father when I'd got to fifth grade,
and he said that I had a knack for learning English,
and he asked if anyone at home was helping me with it.
My father was a bricklayer,
my mother was a housewife,
and English had never been anywhere near our home.
When my father heard this from the school,
he sought out different language programs
until he found a school that accepted his proposal,
to trade his maintenance services in return with English classes for me.
It was the only way he could afford it -
with his own work.
Thanks to that, when I entered college at 17,
I already spoke English.
And when I finished college,
I was granted a scholarship to do a specialization in England.
When I came back to Brazil,
I worked at coordinating some language-teaching units
and was invited to grade master's and doctorate papers of English students
at one of the first Brazilian universities to have access to high-speed internet.
When I saw the internet at the university and the computer in the school,
I had an idea,
and I brought these technologies together to help improve language instruction,
allowing more students to learn English.
This generated news articles in two big newspapers
from different Brazilian states.
And these articles led to an invitation I received
to work in a company that was coming to Brazil
with the initiative of integrating technology
into all fields of knowledge.
I started working at this company as a pedagogy assistant,
and I went through all the steps to become the vice president of the company,
which operated in 89 countries.
I started traveling to international conventions,
searching for answers -
in countries that had the world's best education -
on how we could get students involved
and help teachers deal with the enormous frustration
of preparing a class,
arriving at class all excited,
and leaving unhappy because they couldn't get the students involved.
The more I got to know model schools,
the more I'd seek for inspiration
and would return to Brazil to implement the projects.
So after a while -
despite the "she won't hear, she won't talk, she won't learn" -
I was there, professionally accomplished, fulfilling my mission in education.
Then came the time to realize my life's dream:
to become a mother.
And when I decided it was time to realize this dream,
I was told I wouldn't be able to have a child.
Because of the issues I still have from the cerebral palsy,
I wouldn't have a problem getting pregnant.
But I wouldn't be able to carry the pregnancy to term.
It took me some time to process this information,
but I ended up thinking:
this very person,
to whom doctors are saying
it won't be possible to realize her dream of having a child,
is also the person who was once told,
"You won't walk, won't talk, won't learn."
And I was doing all of that.
So I decided I'd try to make my dream of becoming a mother come true.
I got pregnant,
and from the fifth month on,
I understood what the doctors had been trying to tell me,
and I had a very complicated, high-risk pregnancy
that required four months of absolute rest.
On June 30, 1989,
my biggest dream came true:
my daughter was born strong and healthy
and began to accompany me on my educational mission.
So every time she was on school vacation,
we would go together to whatever country I was visiting
and to any Brazilian city I went to for educational work
whenever she was on a break.
When it was time for her to go to college,
to my delight,
she trained in pedagogy at the University of São Paulo.
After she finished university, she had an idea:
to help the families
who were always asking us for guidance, solutions, and ideas
about how to help their children get more involved with their education.
So she started a project,
going to families' houses
and helping them to make the adjustments needed
so the kids would get more involved with their studies.
And every time she'd visit a family,
she'd call me, wherever I was, and ask for my help.
And we realized that every time we planned together,
the family enjoyed great success.
That student - child or adolescent -
was able to study,
to perform better,
and to be engaged with learning.
That is our biggest dream.
Then she invited me to work with her.
And that was how I went to this company,
where I had worked for 18 years and 5 months,
where I'd built a career,
where I'd overcome several moments of prejudice because I'm a woman
and because I'm disabled -
not inside the company, but in the market -
and I resigned.
Many people thought I was crazy
to give up a career I'd built with such hard work,
but I knew what I was doing.
I had two main motivations.
One, when my daughter invited me to work with her in education,
I saw, before my eyes,
my life's dream coming together with my life's mission:
my daughter in education, inviting me to work with her.
This was my first motivation.
And the second was the desire that I had
to find out if the doctors had been wrong
saying that I would have learning difficulties,
or if this diagnosis was correct,
what would have allowed me to overcome this challenge?
At this time,
Taís, my daughter, and I began to study cognitive neuroscience
to discover what happens in the brain when we are learning
and maybe to find answers for me.
We've found marvelous discoveries in neuroscience
that shed light on questions that teachers confront every day in the classroom,
that parents face at home when the child doesn't want to study or go to school,
and for the challenges our students confront today
when they're not able to pay attention, focus,
have the desire and eagerness to learn.
We were able to share with parents
that every child needs a shared responsibility inside the home;
otherwise, they won't develop a passion for their studies.
A child who hears all their life from their parents,
"My child, your only job is to study.
I'll take care of the rest,"
doesn't develop a sense of responsibility,
self-esteem,
and the memory of procedures and facts
so that they can have a positive relationship with learning.
And I found out that I'm the living proof
of one of the most recent discoveries of neuroscience,
and that's neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to restructure and recover itself
at any stage of life,
especially during childhood and adolescence.
An environment rich in stimuli
allows the brain to regenerate itself
and to generate social and cognitive behaviors
and motor skills
that would never have come about
if this student or this child had never been exposed to challenges,
to praise,
and the belief that they are capable.
I discovered that the way my parents had brought me up
made me who I am.
They left the maternity room
with the decision that they would focus on my potential,
not on my deficiencies.
When my father took me to school in the early days,
I still struggled to walk.
I'd just been released from a series of surgeries.
I wore a very strange boot then,
and when he walked with me on the street, holding my hand,
people followed us with their eyes.
When a child was with them, sometimes the kid would point at us.
Every time this happened, my father would look at me and say,
"They think your dress is very pretty,"
or "They are admiring your boot."
I believed all that so much that I'd raise my head and say,
"Let me show off, right?"
My father, one Christmas -
at that time, parents could afford just one present for all their children.
They felt happy at this accomplishment, and their children did too.
My father bought a bicycle as a gift for my three siblings and me.
My siblings unwrapped the bike and ran out to the street to ride it.
I looked at my father and said,
"I want to ride the bicycle too."
And he said, "So go outside and ask your siblings to help you.
If they can't help you, come back and I will help you."
What I remember
is my brother sitting me on the bicycle,
my oldest sister securing me,
my little brother pushing me,
and I swear to you
that I have the memory of riding the bicycle.
More than these attitudes and stances coming from my parents,
I had the good fortune that the school that accepted me,
although they had never heard of the term "inclusion"
because it still didn't exist,
the school really included me.
All the teachers accepted me
as a student capable of learning.
I was not even dismissed from physical education class.
My teacher would say to me,
"Roberta, I need help tidying up the equipment and games.
Could you help me while your classmates run around the court?
I helped out, very gladly, full of pride.
When I'd finished, she'd say,
"I want you to walk the last lap around the court,
and your classmates are waiting for you."
I'd go and do the activity with my friends,
and I felt part of that group,
part of that class,
and capable of learning.
And what I discovered in cognitive neuroscience
was that cognitive neuroplasticity is a process
that happens when a parent says to their child,
"My child, go try. I know you can do it,"
when a teacher says to a student,
"If you can't do it, ask for help.
I'll help you,"
when a teacher tells the student,
"If you can't do it this way,
there must be another way that, together, we'll be able to do."
And cognitive neuroscience has shown
that the positive expectations a parent passes onto their child
about their capacity to overcome challenges
changes their brain physically.
The positive expectation that you, teachers,
pass onto your students every day
is what your students will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Much more than the content you need to teach them,
they need you to show that you believe they are capable,
and together you will find the way
so that each one can learn at their own pace
and develop to their maximum potential.
So, the answer that I searched out in so many different countries
had already been given to me,
had already been brought to me by a bricklayer and a housewife -
a bricklayer who studied up to the third grade in school
and my mother who studied up to the fifth grade -
and the teachers who had never even heard of inclusion
but really turned me into the mother that I am today,
the teacher I've been all my life,
the professional I managed to be,
and this person that today
humbly comes to thank all the parents and teachers
who are really capable of bringing about a change in education
so that the students really discover the pleasure of learning.
Thank you.
(Applause)