Did you know that the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School has a Brazilian history class? Well, we do! The whole purpose of this class is to teach students who came to the U.S. at a very young age the main points about their home country. It’s not only about learning history, but the class teaches students to work together and develop a way of showing everyone that Brazilians are not as bad as they think we are. So far, we have been a successful class. We have been on task and have been able to achieve our goals. We have made a film reflecting on our life stories and have cooked a traditional Brazilian meal to which we invited American students as our guests. Our class Web site features Brazilian history and a film of last year’s Brazilian Celebration Day, and we have painted a beautiful mural in the high school library. This class has been our way of showing what we can do, and that we are part of the school community.

Most important, this class gives us the opportunity to be ourselves. At first when the class started, a lot of people thought that it was going to be a waste of our time and of teacher Elaine Weintraub’s time. But they were wrong; this class has brought us closer together and has given us a reason to be proud of who we are. We are all aware that we have a history and a tradition, and in the words of one of the students in the class: “I have never felt proud of who I am in school before. I always felt like an outsider.” I think we all realize that we are part of the mix here at the school and that we have stories to share.

We were invited to go to Harvard to present our work at the David Rockefeller School of Latin American Studies; a group of us went and showed our film and our Web site and met graduate students, professors, the Brazilian ambassador and the Brazilian consul. We were made to feel very welcome and we have been invited to go back in February to discuss our experiences with students in a Harvard class on Brazilian culture. It’s very exciting to think that going to Harvard might be a possibility for some of us — a real American dream!

Before our class started, the regional high school had never had an important Brazilian representative as a guest, but on Dec. 14, the Brazilian history class hosted a visit from Consul Fernando Igreja from the Brazilian consulate. He came to see us and our work with his wife, Prof. Rebekah Igreja and Dr. Clemence Jouet Pastre, who is a professor of Portuguese language at Harvard. The students in our class were really interested in hearing what they had to share with us. It was an honor for the Brazilian history class to receive such important guests in our first year. All of our guests were very kind and very interested in all that we have done and brought us gifts of many books.

We enjoyed each and every second of their visit.

Ana Carolina Nascimento is a student at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.