Native Brazilian Heloisa Sader named Regina valedictorian

IOWA CITY — Heloisa Sader took a leap of faith in January 2020, moving from her home in Brazil to Iowa City for to finish high school. Then the pandemic hit.

She didn’t see her parents — who still live in Brazil — for almost two years.

“I never felt like I made a mistake,” said Sader, who lives with her aunt and uncle in Iowa City. “I’m kind of relieved I moved before the COVID-19 (pandemic). If I had waited two more months, I don’t think I would be here.”

Sader, 18, is one of 43 students who graduated May 21 from Regina High School in Iowa City. She was the valedictorian.

As a child, Sader would visit her family in Iowa. It was then that she decided she wanted to go to high school in the United States, she said.

Sader’s aunt — Inara Souza — has hosted two of her other nieces over the years as they participated in foreign exchange student programs. Over the last three years, Souza said she has enjoyed having girl talk at the dinner table and going shopping with Sader.

The pandemic was tough, Sader said. She had gotten used to her school schedule and speaking English when she had to transition to learning from home to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 at school.

Sader — whose native language is Portuguese — said she would often come home from school so exhausted from learning in a second language that she would need to take a three-hour nap.

But once back in school in person, Sader wanted to get involved. She joined math club. This year, she was in the ensemble in the musical “Grease.”

She also began volunteering as a way to get more involved in the community and for it to feel more like home, she said. She organizes food at a food bank, runs the cash register at the Crowded Closet thrift store and delivers gently-used furniture and household items to families in Johnson County who are exiting homelessness through Houses into Homes.

This fall, Sader is going to Loras College in Dubuque to study biology. She wants to be a doctor — possibly a surgeon — someday.

  Buy Photo

Beth Hill, a math teacher at Regina High, said Sader is a “really strong math student.”

In January 2020, Sader was enrolled in Algebra II as a freshman, but Hill saw she was bored. So Sader instead was enrolled in pre-calculus, a class typically reserved for 11th and 12th grade students.

“Calculus is when people usually start to get stuck,” Hill said. Even though math comes “so easily” to Sader, she’s still “willing to do the hard work despite her natural ability.”

This year, Sader took both statistics and the advanced calculus BC, which is considered a college-level course.

Sader also would come in to Hill’s classroom over the lunch break and work on The New York Times Spelling Bee — a virtual game where players can score points by making as many words as possible out of only seven letters.

Sader took the Advanced Placement Spanish exam and passed — earning college credit — even though AP Spanish is not offered at Regina High. She worked one-on-one with the Spanish teacher to prepare, Hill said.

“To be able to take that exam without the formal classroom environment, just working with the teacher, is really a testament to her,” Hill said. “I’m really proud of her and how hard she’s worked.”

Comments: (319) 398-8411; grace.king@thegazette.com