“My son was my biggest strength. You always want to do things for your kids to be proud of”

Story #14

Célia Bianconi, Brazilian-American

Interviewed & Written by Roni Deckard

Edited by Madeline Humphrey 

Dr. Célia Bianconi, Master Lecturer and Coordinator of the Portuguese Language Program at Boston University, migrated to the United States from Brazil in 1984. Her husband’s PhD pursuit led them to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where they lived and studied for four and a half years.

Here, Dr. Bianconi took classes in French, Italian and Spanish. With a background in advertising, her love of teaching inspired her to pursue a Masters in Brazilian and Portuguese literature. After moving to Washington state and having a son, Dr. Bianconi decided to dedicate herself full-time to raising her son.

Moving to Massachusetts, she slowly started to resume her teaching career, first working as an assistant teacher at a Montessori school. “After staying there for a little bit, I said, ‘well, what am I doing here? I should be teaching Portuguese.’ That's what I wanted,” Dr. Bianconi said in an interview. “So, I went to teach at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. After a brief stay at UMass Boston, I went to teach at Harvard where I stayed for 7 years. Next, I went to Tufts, where I started a new Portuguese program; and soon after, I moved to BU. I started this program at BU, where I am now.”

When asked what drew her towards teaching, Dr. Bianconi said, “I think at the beginning, the important thing was for me to talk about my culture, and to be close to my culture by teaching the language I grew up with,” she said. “To become a good Portuguese teacher, I had to work a lot. I had to learn a lot because it's not enough to just speak the language; one needs to know how to teach the language as well.” Today, she holds a Ph.D. in Education from Lesley University. 

When comparing her own education to her students, and her inspiration behind going in pursuit of her degree in education, Dr. Bianconi said, “I studied (as an undergraduate) in Brazil, and when I studied there, I lived with my family. Every day when I got home from school, I had food, I had clean clothes, and more. Everything was ready for me; I just had to study. When I came here and began teaching, I noticed the difference and started caring and admiring those kids. They needed good grades, clean clothes, and everything. In my first year teaching, students were assigned to write a daily journal. At the beginning, they could not write much in Portuguese. So, they would just say one phrase, but by the end of the semester, they were already writing personal things about themselves. Things like ‘I don't have money,’ or ‘my mother is going to send me money at the end of the month.’ So that makes me appreciate their hard work. And that’s what changed my pattern. So, I went back to study foreign language education and went to school to get a Ph.D. in Education.”

For Dr. Bianconi, migrating to the United States was not simple. “I think everything was very difficult at the beginning,” she said. “I especially think about leaving my family, my friends, my job, and my life behind. It was an exciting experience to come, but on the other hand, it's always bittersweet. I remember having dinner when we lived in Illinois and looking outside when it was completely dark and cold, and I started crying.”

 Dr. Bianconi also mentioned how only recently, technology has made her experience easier to adapt. “Today, it is so much easier. We can be in contact daily with family and friends, but when we migrated, we were students, so we didn't have much money,” she said. “It was always waiting and waking up very early in the morning to be able to make a phone call once a week. That was very difficult: the adaptation of everything.”

There were also significant cultural differences that Dr. Bianconi experienced when she migrated to the United States. “Brazilians like to be close to one another. That was the most difficult part. At the beginning, I thought ‘oh, because I'm a foreigner, people don't want to talk to me,’ but then you start learning more and more about the culture,” she said. “So you know it's not you; it's the way it is.” 

“When my son started school, I used to see some parents every day when I went to pick him up. We always said hi and everything, but when you come out of this environment, and you see the person in different places, and you go to say hi, and the person doesn't say hi to you back,” she said. “I realized that it's because they are very formal, and we hadn’t been formally introduced. For me, that was always difficult to understand.”

Dr. Bianconi also acknowledged the privileges she experienced in her own personal circumstances. “The thing is that we came here in different circumstances. We came here to study in a privileged way,” she said. “Everything we do is inside the academic environment where there is much more acceptance of who you are and diversity.”

During difficult times, Dr. Bianconi found strength through consistent exercise, community, her husband and son. “I had a friend from Brazil, and we're always helping each other; if one day I didn't want to go exercise, she would call me and come to pick me up. I think having friends helps a lot,” she said. “When I had my baby, I think it was much more important to be part of something; especially for my son to grow up in an environment that he wouldn't feel like, ‘oh, it's not my place; my mom is not happy’ or something like that. My son was my biggest strength. You always want to do things for your kids to be proud of.”

As time passed, Dr. Bianconi discussed her experience in a new country in comparison to her expectations. “You create your own life, your own friends, your own house, your own profession. You become a different person, and you're also a different person,” she said. “You have so many of you that come together in one place with little bits and pieces of you that start building another identity, like a professional teacher.”

This year, Dr. Bianconi said that she hopes to see her program at BU flourish further. “Everything that I wanted to accomplish professionally every year is the growth of my program at BU: the Portuguese program. I'm very much dedicated to it. So, every year is a new challenge for it to grow, to have more students, and to be able to offer more opportunities. That's always my big goal,” she added, “and I want to go to Brazil as soon as possible.”

Her advice to any migrants in a similar situation as herself is to “have a goal,” she said. “I think studying is very important. No matter which goals you have, I think you must invest in that goal. There is one thing that I always say when I train teachers when they say they can’t because they don't have the support, I say ‘yes, we don't, but we're not going to have it unless we're really sure of who we are: we are professionals that can teach.’”

In regards to what she wishes more people knew about immigrants, Dr. Bianconi said that we should all have a little bit more knowledge of other countries and their cultures. “Because they don't have this knowledge of where you are from, people talk to you like you're from another planet. ‘Oh, do you eat this? Do you do this? Do you take a shower?’ I think if most people were more knowledgeable about places, things would be very different,” she said. “I say I'm from Brazil, and people say ‘I went to Argentina’ and I think oh, hum, okay.” 

“In terms of being an incoming immigrant, you are always in between places. Even when you are there, you want to come here, when you come here, you want to go there; sometimes you don't belong anymore,” she said. “I'm a different person, because not only am I different, but everything has changed. So, you are kind of in this limbo in the middle of two cultures. This can make you feel a little down, you know, ‘where do I really belong? Where am I?’ But, overall, I think it's wonderful.”