Escolas Fisk 1973 - 1979

Fisk students on the verge of taking final exams at the Main Office on Avenida Lins de Vasconcelos circa 1978. The blogger (and teacher) is on the centre having Lidia Picolo (another teacher) on the left.

1973 - 1974 - 1975

I don't actually know exactly when private English-language-teaching schools started sprouting up in Sao Paulo but if one takes the period just after World War II it is possible that Yazigi was one of the first to be established.

By the 1960s there were a few schools that taught English-as-a-foreign-language: Yazigi, União Cultural Brasil-Estados Unidos, Instituto Roosevelt and Escolas Fisk which had the best (and fastest to grab) method among them. 

There were myriads of smaller schools especially downtown Sao Paulo that catered for less affluent students. I, myself, remember having taken an English course circa 1968 at one of them in an old building on Avenida Sao João opposite the Main Post Office. After completing the 1st stage I went over to TNT (Trans World Tuition) another 'el cheapo' school on Praça Clovis Bevilacqua and did the basic stage all over again. I kept changing schools so I never managed to get on to the 2nd stage after all.

Even though I could never finish any English-course properly I ended up traveling to the USA in late 1971 and had to grapple with the language 'in loco'. That was not easy! I remember I met a Brazilian fellow called Damazio Nazareth who could speak English better than the average 'Brazuca'. He told me he had learned English at a Fisk School in Guarulhos-SP. That was the first time I ever heard Fisk's name. I was impressed with Damazio's usage of the Present Perfect Tense and other grammar tools.

In mid 1973, when I was back in Brazil, Antonio Gonçalves Filho aka Nino, a friend of mine who had also been in the US told me he was attending a training course to become a teacher of English at Escolas Fisk, on rua Francisca Miquelina, 118. Nino convinced me I should also attend the course and I went along for the ride. 

I remember I was asked to write a composition in English when I applied to the position at Fisk's main office on Rua Santo Antonio, 454. I wrote something about 'everyday people' which was the title of one of Sly & the Family Stone's greatest hits. Nino and I only attended the latter part of the course which was given magnificently by Valter Bresolin Pinto de Moraes so I wasn't sure about my ability to grasp all the grammar points correctly.

Soon after I was called by Valter himself (who was a sort of teachers' counsellor) offering me to teach at a company in Vila Leopoldina, a suburb next to Lapa. I took a bus and went to the office of a factory  to start teaching its office employees. I was surprised to find among the students a former colleague who I had worked with at AASP, a lawyers's association office before I went to the USA (1970-1971). It was a bad omen. It sort of broke the spell. I was probably too shy and not sure of myself and it didn't work out. I gave a few classes but I felt terribly unsuited for the task so I went back to Valter and told him I would give it up because I was feeling depressed. He was nice to me and after a few weeks he rang me up again proposing I start giving the Basic course at Santo Amaro which was a proper school unit. He said he trusted my abilities and there I went to the far-away suburb to try and teach English again.

Bruno Caravati was the unit's director. I don't remember much about it except that the class-rooms were on the first floor of a commercial building at a busy square and I became friends with one of the students who was a Basque young engineer who had migrated to Brazil only a short time before. We probably became friends because I had a left-wing leaning and I knew about ETA and its struggle against the Spanish dictatorship. I left the Santo Amaro unit because it was too far from Bela Vista where I lived. 

Next I was teaching at the Vila Mariana unit which was on the 1st floor of a small shopping mall on rua Domingos de Moraes, 814. It was a friendly place with Elena as secretary and de-facto-'boss'. With time I realized that school-units with no formal director were more fun and 'old' Vila Mariana was one of such places. 'Old' because that unit would soon move over to a big house next to the great Brahma beer factory and the huge Orthodox Metropolitan Cathedral just on the right-hand side of the entrance to the new Paraiso subway station. 

At Vila Mariana I also met Mrs. Thomson - yes, her name was spelt without a P - a pert old lady who had been a teachers's counsellor in the old days and now was about to retire. She still gave some classes and took part in the training courses given by Valter Bresolin. I liked her for she had a strong ironic vein which was perceived by only a few. She was downright cheeky if I may say so and that was so rare among those people who taught English-as-a-foreign-language who were either too serious (boring in other words) or stuck up. It seemed like she was always secretly making fun of everything. I remember  once she was about to go to England for holidays and I asked her to bring me something about Ireland. She looked at me with a smirk but didn't say a word. She didn't forget my request even though I had met her for so short a time. She bought me a nice traveling book about Ireland.  

At Vila Mariana I met a young teacher called Julio Galvão, originally from Maranhão and we became pals for the longest time. Read more about me and Julio at this link:

http://dear-friends-of-mine.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/me-julio-down-by-school-yard.html

In 1974-1975 I taught English on Saturday mornings at the Ipiranga unit. It was a nice house on Avenida Dom Pedro I, 1048, not too far from the Monument. Mr. Umberto Blancato was the director but he was as least interfering as possible. He kept himself busy giving as many classes as he could. I taught a Free Conversation course from 8:00 am to 12:00 noon. Three long hours for a group of faithful students. We had a quick coffee-break at 10:00, went back to work, then left at noon. I still don't know how I managed to make the classes interesting with so much time to fill in. I guess it must have been a combination of patient students and a dedicated teacher. I only stopped teaching at Ipiranga when I went back to the USA in July 1975. 

In late 1974 and early 1975 I found time to attend 'refresher courses' given by Valter Bresolin at the brand-new Main Office on Avenida Lins de Vasconcelos, 2594. That's when I met a few good teachers and made a few friends. I had met Lidia Picolo at Francisca Miquelina's Saturday's refresher courses and now we renewed our friendship. 

I also met Adilson, a young man who taught at Santo André who had just returned from the USA where he had lived for one year on an exchange-student-program. Adilson went to the USA in August 1973 and back back to Santo André in May 1974. I remember Adilson used to sing along to Charlie Rich's 'The most beautiful girl in the world' (#1 at Billboard on 15 December 1973) which he must have listened a lot when he lived there. 

Adilson also sang along to Jim Croce's 'I'll have to say I love you in a song' (# 9 on 27 April 1974) which he knew with a different set of words he must have learned from his school mates at the high-school-yard. The parody was pretty indecent and had a lot of 7 dirty words that are banned by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). In case you wonder what they are here's the list: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits. Adilson was a fun guy. I've never heard of him again. 

When I went back to the USA in July 1975, I left my two Basic-course groups at Vila Mariana to Marcio, a young hopeful who had started as a Fisk student and worked his way up to become a teacher himself. Lidia Picolo had flown to the USA on the 4th of July 1975, I flew on the 5th and Paulo Wenzel, arguably my best students at Ipiranga's FC course flew to the USA around the same time. The only difference was that I would stay there for 1 and a half year. 

Avenida Rebouças, 2942 before leaving for Av. Lins de Vasconcelos for the final examination; Dona Maria Turchinski, wearing a black  blouse, was the Unit's mainstay.  

1978 Christmas Party at Avenida Lins de Vasconcelos; Regina Vilaça is on the left; one can see Monica's back in the background between the two guys dancing. 

Saturday afternoon fever with teacher Marcio, secretary Ivany and Mr. Fisk in person showing he knew how to boogie. 

Nezel, secretary from the Vila Mariana-unit doing her best to liven up the party. Michael Mingucci and his wife Monica watch on the background.  

a 1970 leaflet showing Escolas Fisk's main sites around the city and state of S.Paulo.

1970-1971 leaflet

Fisk News, 20 November 1970.

Festa de criação da Grande Fisk Centro - Depois de longos anos, as Escolas Fisk conseguem concretizar um velho sonho! Ampliar a Francisca Miquelina. A escola da Chica Mica, 118, é a primeira Fisk, o berço de toda a organização. Comoda por sua construção e localização, em pleno centro, a falta de espaço impedia a sua ampliação, obrigando as EF a manter, para poder atender todos os seu alunos, outros locais no miolo da cidade. Agora, conseguimos pegar (meio na marra), um conjunto idêntico no mesmo prédio, ocupando-o todo. Podemos agora, concentrar todo o nosso esforço num só lugar, dando aos nossos alunos todo o conforto que eles merecem. 

Criamos a Grande Fisk Centro, que será formada pela fusão da antiga 'Chica Mica' e da XV de Novembro. Isso proporcionará maior movimento escolar, além de contínua atividade social ('Saturday Club', biblioteca, discoteca etc.) Assim, no dia 5 Dezembro 1970, haverá um dia inteiro de festividades, recepcionando os alunos que vem da XV. As 15:00 horas haverá conferência proferida por Mr. Leonard Fisk, irmão de Mr. Fisk, que virá dos USA para prestigiar as solenidades. Todos os alunos e amigos são convidados (não haverá convites individuais). 

a newsletter with a lot of information. 

from left to right: Nezel (Vila Mariana's secretary), Julio Galvao, Maria Turchinski, (Rebouças's secretary) & Luiz Amorim in 1977.

Michael Mingucci, Julio Simões & Luiz Amorim.

Julio, Maria Turchinski & Luiz Amorim at Fisk's Xmas party 1977.

Fisk-Rebouças circa 1978 was glamour itself...

some Fisk-Rebouças students were super-models in disguise... 

students' snapshots at Fisk-Rebouças parking-lot.

Rebouças-Unit students take their finals at Lins de Vasconcelos.

students waiting to be interviewed by a Native-speaker as part of Final Examinations...

Rua XV de Novembro circa 1956.

Rua Apeninos in 1958 in Vila Mariana. Fisk had a school next to the Orthodox Church on the top. 

26 paralles and diagonals... these are the steps to Ipiranga's Independence Monument which is two blocks away from Fisk's Ipiranga's Unit on Avenida D.Pedro I, 1.048.

Fisk School in Guarulhos' Praça Getúlio Vargas circa 1968. This was actually the very first Escola Fisk I was sent to teach in late 1973, but due to it being too far from where I lived I ended up refusing. But I remember so well when I sat down at a chair and watched a Brazilian teacher give an English class. Inside myself I doubted I would be able to get up there in front of everyone and teach English... but I ended up doing it eventually.

Mr. Fisk goes to Sao Paulo

Here am I paraphrasing Hollywood director Frank Capra's titles 'Mr. Deed goes to town' (1936) and 'Mr. Smith goes to Washington' (1939) to introduce the life of Richard Hugh Fisk aka Mr. Fisk the man who made the task of learning English-as-a-foreign-language a little easier for thousands upon thousands of Brazilian students.

'Immediate Converstion in English' double-album made by Chantecler in the 1960s.

Richard Hugh Fisk was born on 3 September 1922 in a farm in Tunbridge-Vermont  owned by his grandfather Roswell Fisk.

His parents Sarah (born in 1890) and Herbert Fisk (1893) lived in Fulton-N.Y. and had Herbert Junior (Herbie) in 1914 and Leonard (Larry) in 1916 when tragedy struck Roswell Fisk’s family: their son Fay died of polio in 1917.

Herbert’s mother Emma Slavar Fisk was grief-stricken and made Roswell Fisk move the family to the hills of Vermont in the Orange County to start a new life planting corn, hay and extract maple syrup from the trees. Tunbridge-VT was a small town so they did their shopping in Barre-VT.

Herbert & Sarah then had Robert in 1919, Lois, the only girl, in 1921 and finally our hero, Richard Fisk in 1922.  

In 1924, when Richard was 2 years old they moved from his grandfather’s property and rented a house near by but kept on working for him.  

In 1929, their neighbour Clarence Rogers died and his widow Myra employed Herbert Fisk as her factotum.  The family moved in to share the farm-house with the owner.

In July 1933, when Richard was 11 years old the farm-house burned down so the family moved back to Fulton-N.Y. where one could get better employment. Soon, Herbert loses his job and goes back to Vermont and Myra’s arms. Sarah who stayed back in Fulton sues for divorce which is granted in 24 October 1934.

Richard enters High School in September 1935 while Herbie Jr. marries and Larry becomes the de-facto male head of the family.

In 1938-1939, his last year in High School, Richard gets the taste of how much he liked teaching when he substitutes an absent teacher at the last minute and sees it’s good even though he was shy personally.  At the same time he takes typing and short-hand at a business school.

In the summer of 1939, his brother Larry decides to try his luck in Richmond, Virginia and Richard goes along for the 15-hour ride south.  Larry found a good job but Richard didn’t so he went further south to Saint Petersburg, Florida where he stayed with Ernest and Lottie his elderly grand-uncle and grand-aunt just in time for the 1939-1940 winter season. Richard found employment in the hospitality industry, made himself a little money working as a bus boy and bell-hop and as 'high season' ended in May 1940, he went back to to Richmond-VA where he worked  at McCrory’s department store while going to business college at the University of Virginia at night and shared a house with Larry and their mother Sarah.

The USA entered World War II in December 1941. His brother Robert (Bob) had joined the US Army in 1940 as a nurse and Larry decided to volunteer with the Navy. Richard was finally conscripted into the US Army in November 1942. As both brothers went to war, Sarah went back to Fulton-NY to live with Lois, whose husband Slim was also conscripted. 

In 1943, while in the US Army, Richard studied engineering at the Oklahoma Agricultural & Mechanical University being finally shipped to Europe arriving in Marseille in the fall of 1943 where he performed mostly clerical work usually typing away in 4 carbon copies. While working for the Army, Richard noticed that American generals and military staff had difficulty in communicating with the Russians, who were USA's allies in the war against Germany, Italy and Japan. So Richard started studying the Russian language by himself thinking he might one day help Americans communicate faster with their Russian counterparts. 

Richard Fisk served the US Army for 37 months, 13 of them in Europe where once he had a chance to see Marlene Dietrich performing for the troops. In December 1945, when the war was already won, Richard received news from home that his father Herbert had had a stroke and was not well. Richard was discharged and had the chance to spend Christmas 1945 with his father in Vermont. Father died early in the new year.

As Richard had served the Army for such a long time he was entitled to go to University free of charge benefiting from a programme created by the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration. Richard took full advantage of that and went to Syracuse University in the State of New York early in 1946 and graduated in International Relations having taken Russian as a second language.

Late May 1947, Richard gets his feet on road and hitchhikes from Fulton-NY to California. He visits Minneapolis-Minnesota, Oregon, San Francisco finally reaching Los Angeles. On his way back East, in San Bernardino he gets a lift with a friendly 60-year-old man driving a Buick. They share the driving-wheel and go through Las Vegas, Denver, Wichita up to Kansas City. Richard takes another 10 days to reach Syracuse-NY where he would stay another year and finally graduate in May 1948.

In 1949, Richard does his Master degree at the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington-DC while Larry, who had been working for the government since 1948 is transfered to work at the US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela.

After Richard earned his degree he came to a rude awakening: he could not find a job. Little did he know that he had been swimming against the stream when he chose to study Russian during the War years. Circa 1947, President Harry S. Truman declared Russia as the enemy starting the hideous Cold War that lasted 35 years and shattered any dreams Richard might have had in using his abilities with the Russian language. He got stuck with a diploma that opened no doors whatsoever.

He went on to try his luck in New York City where his brother Bob had been living and working as a hairdresser. Larry had been transfered yet again from Caracas to Sao Paulo to work in the American Consulate. He lived with Sarah in a good apartment on Avenida Brigadeiro Luiz Antonio. As Richard was depressed and dejected in NYC, Larry invited him to visit them and the invitation was accepted on the spot.

Richard sailed to Brazil in late February arriving in Santos on 7 March 1950. He had studied some Portuguese grammar on the voyage and could already form some sentences to impress his mother and brother at his arrival. He realized he could work in São Paulo as soon as he opened the newspaper and saw Help Wanted ads for people who could speak English. He soon starts working for Oleo Galena Signal a Texaco company at an office near Theatro Municipal in the heart of the city.

Besides working for the American Consulate during the day, Larry had been teaching English as-a-foreign-language for União Cultural Brasil-Estados Unidos at night. He introduced his kid-brother to the school management and he was hired immediately to give classes to two groups of 20 students each. Soon Richard left UCBEU for Instituto de Idiomas Yazigi, a private language-school on Rua Libero Badaró not far from the Texaco office.

Richard knew he liked teaching much better than working in an office so he left his day-time job and started teaching English morning, noon and night. Richard fell in love with Brazilians and their friendlieness and particularly with Zelia de Toledo Pisa, one of his students at Yazigi, who was a young lady who had already been married, separated and had 3 children.

In early 1951, TV Tupi, the very first TV station established in Brazil only a year before entered a partnership with Instituto Yazigi for them to produce a half-hour weekly programme in which a young North-American teacher would teach English for a few hand-picked students. The show would also be beamed on Radio Tupi and presented in a printed format at some newspapers belonging to Diarios Associados, owned by press baron Assis Chateaubriand the Brazilian counterpart of Randolph Hearst.

Richard Hugh Fisk was the man chosen to impersonate Mr. Pep, a handsome yankee with a heavy accented Portuguese who taught English in a most engaging way to students who could be either Lolita Rodrigues or Hebe Camargo, both future major TV stars. Mr Pep soon became a popular fixture with those who had a TV set. Before sailing back to the USA, Larry warned his brother that he would be known only as Mr. Pep so Richard made sure TV Tupi would insert a vignette saying: Richard Fisk as Mr. Pep! The show ran from 1951 through to 1953.

Mr. Fisk hams it on TV Rio, Channel 13, in Rio de Janeiro in the early 1960s.

After some time teaching English to Brazilians Richard came to the stunning conclusion that what Brazilians found the most difficult in speaking English was how to make questions. So he devised his Metodo Fisk de Ensino (Fisk's Teaching Method) in which he emphasized the use of Auxiliary Verbs - do, did, will and would - in the making of questions. He leaves Yazigi for private classes at home. Late 1955, he enters a partnership with Zelia in a sports good business but soon realizes teaching is his only calling.

Late 1957 he marries Zelia who moves into his apartment with her 3 children. Around this time Richard presented a show on TV Paulista in which children lip-synched to an American pop-song and he would translate it into Portuguese and explain some grammar points. The programme was video-taped at his own flat using his children as characters. TV Tupi wanted to revive Mr. Pep but that ended up going to someone else who had been a Fisk's student.

Finally in August 1958, Richard opens his first school on Rua Francisca Miquelina, 118, a short street running parallel to Avenida Brigadeiro Luiz Antonio where he lived with Zelia and the children. It had a few rooms that were turned into 6 class-rooms and a small space to acommodate a secretary-receptionist that would play a very important role in the running of the future units that would spring up with the years. Richard always had a special relationship with those secretaries through the years. Some of them rose to prominent roles in what would become the Fisk Organization and later Fisk Foundation.

Fisk introduced a revolutionary method in the teaching of English-as-a-foreign-language in Brazil. Most language-schools usually started with the verb ‘to be’ plus a demonstrative pronoun:  ‘This is a book’. Students got stuck in that mode and hardly ever made any progress.  Mr. Fisk had a complete new approach in the introduction of simplified questions & answers. He would write 4 auxiliary verbs in a column on the left-hand side of the blackboard: do, did, will, would; in the next column on the right he woud write the pronouns:  I, you, he, she, it, we, they; then on the 3^rd column he would present a few verbs and complements like today, yesterday and tomorrow. Students looking at the blackboard could make up a question and their fellow student would answer it: ‘Do you eat potatoes every day?’ Yes, I do; No, I don’t.  ‘Did you sleep well yesterday?’; ‘Will you go to school tomorrow?’ etc.

Students could ask and answer questions on the very first day and that made the classes more dynamic. Instead of talking whether that was a book or not, students actually talked about themselves and their mates. Mr. Fisk was not Christopher Columbus but he actually discovered an easier way to make questions in English and not get lost in the forest.

The so-called Basic Course had 12 lessons and it contained the whole English grammar in a nutshell. This was revolutionary too as other methods were given in a piecemeal way. After less than a year, the Fisk student was lord of the English language as a whole.

After having acquired a sound base of the English language through those magical 12 lessons came the 2nd book called Junior in which the student could read a dialogue between American everyday people plus some notions of phrasal verbs and the introduction of the Imperial Weights and Measures - pounds instead of kilos, miles instead of kilometres, feet instead of metres, Fahrenheit instead of Celsius etc.

The 3rd book was called Senior and it contained short stories about a typical American family going off on their annual vacation. Then the 4th book, called Intermediate the student had the chance to see phrasal verbs with more details. Finally the 4ht and final Advanced book would wrap it all up.

Escolas Fisk grow

After some time, Fisk opened his 2nd school at Alameda Santos circa 1959. Then it was time to open a 5-class-room school on the 8th floor of a tall building at the heart of the financial district on Rua XV de Novembro.

In 1961, Fisk opened a unit in the far-away suburb of Santo Amaro on Rua Dr. Antonio Bento , 231, having put Russian national Mrs. Turner and Mrs. Jensen as directors. Next came the unit Ipiranga-Cambuci on Avenida Dom Pedro I, 1.048 having Umberto Blancato as director.

Circa 1966, Fisk opened one of his most successful units on Avenida Rebouças, in Pinheiros which would boast about 600 students by 1980. Maria Turchinski was Rebouças-Unit's indefectible secretary who made the grade even with stiff competition from Yagizi that opened a unit close by on Rua Pedroso de Moraes and CCI that opened a unit just across the street.

So we stop at the year 1966. We didn't actually intend to tell the whole story. A proper book telling Mr. Fisk's story was written by Elias Awad and released in 2008.

Richard Fisk (third from the left) at Elementary School in Vermont.

Sarah Fisk, his mother at centre and toddler Richard with his father Herbert at the farm.

Herbie, Robert & Larry Fisk. 

a young Richard Fisk; Larry & Robert Fisk.

Richard Fisk at the US Army in 1944.

Richard's graduation; Leonard & Sarah arrive in Brazil in 1950; Richard & Mum visit Florida in 1954.

Richard Fisk arrives in Brazil by ship and is welcomed by his mother Sarah (right-hand-side photo).

Leonard, Sarah & Robert Fisk in 1943; Sarah & Leonard in Brazil in the 1950s.

Fisk Family in the USA sometime in the 1950s. 

Richard Hugh Fisk who was born in Tunbridge, Vermount on 3rd September 1922, died in São Paulo on 25 February 2019. 

read more at:  http://www.famososquepartiram.com/2019/03/mr-fisk.html