On Monday Nov. 3, student reporters Susana Prachi, Adonis Brice, Anne-Laurie, and Emma Perry met principal Dr. John Braga in his office after school for a wide-ranging conversation about his goals as principal, his personal heroes, his childhood in East Cambridge and the hardest character to beat in Mike Tyson’s Punch Out.
CT: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Braga: Sure. Okay. Um, my name is Dr. Braga, I’ve been a principal, a high school principal, for five years. I’ve been in education for maybe 18, 19 years. I was a teacher, an assistant principal. So, yeah, that’s me.
CT: How is the school you’re going for you so far?
Braga: So far so good. I’m having a really nice time at Everett High School. Students are great. Teachers are great. Staff is great. Community’s great. So, no complaints.
CT: What direction do you plan on leading the school?
Braga: It’s a good question. I think one big thing I’m looking at is programming. Like, having early college programs available for students, more access to pathways, CTE programs. I’m really looking at how to develop those things over time, so that education becomes more and more relevant for students and prepares them for college or career.
CT: You’ve been principal at multiple different schools. Why did you leave your old school to come to Everett High School and how do you think all of that experience will help you here?
Braga: Any experience is good experience. My travel was really far–I live in this area, so I had to travel about 120 miles a day, which makes it a little bit difficult. Now I only travel four miles a day. But I love all my previous schools and people there, and there’s no negative feelings or anything. It’s just there’s only so many hours in the day. And you guys get to have me here.
CT: What is your favorite part of the day?
Braga: The morning, at 7:30, when I can say hi to everyone as they walk in the doors, because I never had that in high school.
CT: What is your greatest accomplishment?
Braga: Hmm, I don’t know, I’m not sure. One thing I can say is that I am not good at taking compliments. I am trying to work on that as a person, but I feel like every day is an accomplishment in itself. But you will have to ask me a years from now.
CT: Who is your personal hero?
Braga: This is a good one. I have a couple. One is Doctor Jose Robeiro. He was a college counselor, and when I was a kid I was part of this program called “Say Yes to Education.” When I was in the third grade at the Harrington school, I got free college through this program. Me and a lot of other kids got free college at any school in the US, we just had to get into the school. So there were a couple people that made that possible. And all of us were first-generation students, we were the first generation to go to college, our parents were working class folks, so none of came from a lot, we didn’t know how to navigate going to college, so these people made it possible. Dr. Ribeiro died some years ago. He died of cancer. Me and my friends would do a run in South Boston to raise money for him. But he made a huge difference in my life. So when I wrote my dissertation to be a doctor, I dedicated it to him because he told me in the third grade that I would write a book one day. That stuck with me because I was not necessarily a young person on the right track at the time. So that would be one. Another person is Miss Anne Larkin. She never gave up on me, no matter how much trouble I gave the school, the program never gave up on me. So she actually came when I graduated from UMass Lowell with my doctorate. She and my wife came together, which I thought was fantastic. I still stay in touch with a lot of the people in that program. No football players, or basketball players or soccer players. Those people are my heroes.
CT: If your life were a book, what would the title be?
Braga: Probably something like, “Learning Every Day.” Cause I think that’s what we’re doing. Any time we think we know something, we’re just getting ready to learn a lot more.
CT: We heard that you’re trilingual. Tell us about how, when, and why you learned these three languages.
Braga: So I grew up speaking Portuguese. English, you know, is the language of the United States, and the one where everybody is educated in, so, obviously, you know, I can speak English. And then Spanish, I studied in college, which was very helpful. When I was a teacher in East Boston, I took many courses in the afternoon to learn Spanish. Language is interesting, and you have to practice it. If you don’t practice a language, you lose it. It’s like a muscle. Not every chance I get, but when I can, I’ll use other languages to keep it strong. I do love languages, that’s one thing I really do love. I’m hoping one day to learn Haitian Kreyol; I have an app that I’m studying on. I’m not very good, but I want to keep working at it to get better and better.
CT: You said you grew up speaking Portuguese. Like, in your family or in your community?
Braga: My family and my community, yeah. I grew up down the street in Cambridge, and at one time, East Cambridge was pretty much all Portuguese speakers. It was one of the communities in Massachusetts, where you didn’t necessarily have to speak English, per se, cause everybody there spoke Portuguese.
CT: In an interview with Lynn Community TV, you said that you started as an English teacher. What were your first few years of teaching like?
Braga: Yeah, my first few years of teaching, like anything you do, were challenging. I wasn’t the best when I started. I learned a lot from that. I learned a lot from students, but I also learned a lot from other teachers: got to know them, got to know what the best practices were. A lot of the students that I taught in East Boston, I taught them in middle school, and then I taught them again in high school. And I still know them. I see them around, I talk to them. They’re all adults now. But it was a great experience, I love teaching. Teaching was a lot of fun. I still enjoy teaching now.
CT: You used to teach Adult ESL classes in Everett. What’s the difference between teaching adults and teaching children?
Braga: A lot of differences, and some similarities. I think one big difference is usually, but not all of the time, younger people are willing to take chances. They’re willing to try a new language, speak a few words, also have an access to, like, English speaking peers. When you teach adults, you have to really build a culture where everybody feels comfortable, and they’re willing to take a chance to try and to learn the language, but also it has to make sense for them to learn it. Like, does it make sense for a job? Does it make sense in my communication at the store? So that’s really what it is. I lived in Everett for some time, and I taught at the Whittier, which was across the street from my house, and then I moved over here to the high school. And I had the same group of parents for a while, and they were fantastic. I learned more from the parents probably than they learned from me. But when you teach adults, it’s about creating a climate that’s comfortable. Because some of my students may be older than I am. So they may have a lot more wisdom than I do or know a lot more about life. I’m just there to help teach a language.
CT: When was that, like, the 2000s?
Braga: That would be… I lived here for about three years. In 2011, my son was born; he’s 14 years old now. So that’d probably be like 2012-13. Around that time.
CT: So this building was open at the time.
Braga: It was, yeah, I’m only 42, it wasn’t that long ago. I do remember the old Everett High though. My friends, when I went to school, I went to Cambridge Rindge & Latin, and they went to that school. So if I came to Everett to visit friends, that’s where they were.
CT: You taught ELA at Boston Public Schools from 2007 to 2014. What was your least favorite thing about being an English teacher?
Braga: Yeah, so I taught a few things. I taught bilingual Portuguese. It was the first thing I taught. I taught ELA, I taught ESL. I taught a course called the Big History Project; that was science. Trying to think about what I like least… I think sometimes when, if you don’t reach a student, or you see a student that isn’t successful, that’d probably be my least favorite thing. But, you know, sometimes that happens, you know what I mean? You do your best at something and it doesn’t come together. But if you see a student struggling, or not being successful, that’s probably my least favorite part of it now.
CT: If you didn’t have to sleep, what would you do with the extra time?
Braga: Probably work, which isn’t too fun, because I’m always working.
CT: What are you interested in that most people haven’t heard of?
Braga: I’m a big ice hockey fan. I don’t know if everyone knows that. I have three daughters but my one in the middle, who’s 12, is a big ice hockey player. So that’s what we spend our weekends doing, going to different ice hockey rinks and playing. And I have season tickets to Harvard University which starts Tuesday. So me, her and my son are going to go to the game.
CT: What game or movie universe would you most like to live in?
Braga: Probably Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. I used to love that game. I’ll tell you a little story. I have an older brother who is about 48-49. And so when we were kids, we waited all year to get a Nintendo. So we had a game called Mike Tyson’s Punch Out and basically you had to win to get to Mike Tyson and if you beat him, you won, but no one could ever get past Super Macho Man. He was this guy who would throw this punch and go around in a circle. So we would spend all night trying to get through it and beat Mike Tyson, but we never could. We had one friend over the house one time. We lived in Cambridge, and they put in a cheat code to get to Mike Tyson and we beat him.
CT: And finally, is there anything else you would like us to know?
Braga: Just that I’m happy to be here, genuinely happy and excited to be here. And that, you know, I want to be here for a very long time. My ambition for a career is this position and to do well in this position. It’s not to go anywhere else or be anywhere else. I like being a high school principal. It’s not anything else more that I want to do. So I’m excited to be a part of the community, supporting the community, and just so you know how much I support the community, Everett is playing my alma mater on Friday and I’m going to support Everett. So please don’t tell too many people. Well, you could tell whoever you want to tell. But I’ll get a bunch of calls about it.
