The 14-year-old started her Class Diary page two years ago to demand better teaching conditions and improvements to the dilapidated classrooms at her school in Florianopolis, but some didn’t appreciate such public scrutiny on social media.
“For me, we just stand up for our rights… it’s not such a big deal,” she tells Giovana Vitola from Dateline.
“Negative criticisms... I read them, I like to know the other side,” she says. “But sometimes people say ‘I don't like you’. I really don't care.”
The criticism included deaths threats on Facebook and even a rock attack on their home which injured her grandmother, but it only made Isadora more determined.
“We kept talking to her and she never wanted to stop, she never wanted to give up,” her mother Mel said.
“At the end of Year Seven, we asked if she wanted to leave that school. And she said no, that she wanted to finish there… what was left for us was to support her.”
“The wall was here covered in graffiti, but there were no bars, nor the gate here, and that glass there was broken,” Isadora tells Dateline.
But it was the sacking of a teacher after she had complained he was unable to control the clasroom that caused the most controversy.
“Poor girl, she was crucified alive,” says Geni, one of the few local teachers prepared to talk to Dateline.
“At the school, the talk was like an atomic bomb went down, because it exploded in such a way that it was discussed everywhere.”
“Teachers felt totally defenceless,” says another teacher. “They were at a loss as to what to do.”
But Isadora has inspired similar campaigns across Brazil, which have revealed shocking videos of teachers verbally abusing students.
She has more than half a million followers on her Facebook page, makes regular public appearances and has even written a book about her experience.
“What Isadora is doing is very important, valuing education or showing the point of view of a student relating to education,” says one of her fans at a book signing. “I think it makes public policy makers think about it.”
“I’m really happy to have inspired others,” Isadora says. “So far, whenever I complain, within one week they fix it.”
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