Teacher of the Year is speaking the same language as students

A bad teacher helped this woman become an award winning teacher. She knows what the students are going through. - - Donna Poisl

BY CLEM RICHARDSON, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

One reason Paula Da Silva-Michelin is such a good teacher is that she once had a very bad one.

It could also be that she had a very good one - her father, Candido Da Silva, who was once director of the Economics Department at Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Campinas, the university in her hometown of Capinas, Brazil.

"My father always said if you want something, you have to work for it," Da Silva-Michelin said. "When I told him I wanted to take an English class, he said find one you can afford."
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