The Iraci Salete School is located in the city of Rio Bonito do Iguaçu, in the settlement. We've had twenty years of settlement. These problems that are so strong in the encampments; it seems that are coming out even more in settlements. There is a perception that perhaps in the big city is less difficult to deal with. In the rural area, in the small town, the traditional family issue, this is more difficult to deal with. In the settlement, these issues of machismo, homophobia, racism and all kinds of prejudice seem to gain even more force. Obviously, the school is no island and all of this comes to school.

The school at many moments has done some activities. [...] The issue of teenage pregnancy was and still is recurring in the communities. So we did several actions from an interdisciplinary project. We had workshops too. [...] And more recently, we started this work in partnership with the professors here, Professor Else and Professor Sonia, which is the work that has lasted the longest to deal with this set of issues [...].

These days I was seeing a phrase that says a lot to me. 'Sexuality is as human as drinking and eating'. And it is so taboo to us and it is so human, it is part and we have so much difficulty discussing something that has been part of our lives since childhood. I want to say to the comrades Else and Sonia that the project provoked, it touched all the collective of the school. Just the fact of taking the whole school collective out of the comfort zone makes it worth it. And therefore, continuity must be given. It has taken the students out of their comfort zones because it is not a consensus among them, the educators, the community. This has created some situations on how we solve the confrontations.

We had several meetings in that period. I wanted to emphasize both the methodology involved and the way the comrades [Else and Sônia] and also the interns that were working involved our students, which contributed a lot to the accomplishment of the activities. We work with high school classes and the training of teachers. It's a very large school with a lot of students. Also during this period, we produced several materials. Very cool: fanzines, songs, theatres, poetry, drawings.

And I spoke about the resistances and that came from all school collective. It begins with prejudice. [...] There are twelve educators. I was going to get to participate, but we do not know how much resistance this is or how we have to deal with our activities. We had the case of a group that did not want to participate; refused. 'We want to take classes'. And they did not participate, and it was a consensus of the whole class. It is a class that is advanced in terms of consciousness, but, at that moment, they were already graduating. And we respected the position of the class. There was a group that had more prejudice and participated [...].

It was very cool with the parents. We sat down to discuss. This problem happens here. We do not have to hide. We are not encouraging anything. We are debating a problem that is part of the community here. So-and-so here who suffered so much and went away because he was persecuted, he was oppressed in the community. And the parents managed to understand and it was very cool. [...] There were many kinds of talk in the hallways. Some who did not express themselves there [in the workshops], but then they talked. 'I do not agree with that, I agree with that'. It was a scene from an argument. That is what I say: if it were not for this debate, it would not have generated this discussion with students and educators. Our evaluation was extremely positive. It is a permanent demand. Our school every year needs to be doing these discussions.

I went here noting some challenges, some more related to the project, some more general and some to think more about the collective as well: one of these is the collective of educators themselves; we do not have sufficient knowledge. In this project, we worked hard with the students. In the class council, we realize that we need to discuss this with the parents. Here in high school the work was very positive because it moved the school and we managed to raise the level of consciousness of most people; especially those that were armored. But in the community, this debate did not come. And it is a debate, sometimes more difficult to do, but necessary. [...] We think in talking with the students to make an inventory about the reality and we will bring many problematic situations. Say to the community: We need to brainstorm and bring some parents to think about strategies. In the municipality, it is very complicated. You have to have courage, very difficult. Small municipality and in the settlement has an extreme conservatism, it becomes reactionary in some moments. So, you have to do this debate with the community itself [...].

So we have to debate the gender issue and also think about the situation we are in, which is a tremendous setback in all areas, including the Gag Law (Lei da Mordaça) that is related to the criminalization of social movements, the PEC (Proposta de Emenda Constitucional - Proposed Constitutional Amendment) of the High School Reform. I wanted to emphasize the importance of our work. Only we, as a school, have a tremendous difficulty organizing. So I think that with this partnership with the Universities we can qualify these actions more.

 

Testimony of the School Director Rudison L. Ladislau.

Iraci Salete Strosak Rural State School – Rio Bonito do Iguaçu – Paraná.

 April 2018

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