Fernanda Franco Books New Gig At New Haven Reads

Fernanda Franco brings every aspect of her artistic self to her new job as outreach director of New Haven Reads. ​“I walk into the office at Bristol Street, and I feel like Belle from Beauty and the Beast because you walk in and the walls are lined with books and it’s beautiful,” she said. She sang that last line, not unlike the character did in the movie.

Franco, who began her new job in December 2021, is already well-known around New Haven as a musician. She fronts the band Fernanda and The Ephemeral (a.k.a. FaTE) and performs solo and in collaboration with other New Haven-area musicians, whether at a New Haven Jazz Underground event, a State House jam session, or a celebration on the roof of the Arts Council building. At her newest gig, she is thrilled to be recognized and accepted as a practicing artist.

“The cool thing is that they celebrate that I’m an artist, that I’m part of the community,” said Franco. New Haven Reads executive director Kirsten Levinsohn even asked Franco to sing at a recent event.

“She asked, ​‘would it be okay if you sang?’ and I was like, ​‘oh yes!’” said Franco, noting that all the staff at New Haven Reads have made her feel welcome. 

“They’re very like-minded, and you know, I’m crazy, I’m fun, I’m positive. I’m overly positive sometimes, and everybody there is very similar and very passionate about the work.”

That work includes not only running New Haven Reads’s book bank, but providing a variety of services, including its main program of offering one-on-one tutoring services to children. Franco is working on getting the word out to as many people as she can to build up that program, including her fellow artists.

“Our meat and potatoes is the tutoring program, so I kind of want to do a call to arms for musicians and artists in the city to come and tutor, because there’s something really beautiful about that end goal,” she said.

In her previous job as an ESL teacher, Franco became all too familiar with the struggles many students have with learning to read, made even more difficult with the onset of Covid. She also knows that tutoring can benefit both the child and the teacher.

“One of my tutors said something so brilliant, which was ​‘you know, it does so much for us,’ ” Franco said. ​“Right now with the pandemic, I think all of us feel so much pressure, and there’s just a lot of negativity. But when you’re tutoring, you’re just sitting there and reading with this child and you’re watching them grow. You’re helping them through the difficulties.” 

Franco speaks from direct experience. ​“I tutor, you know, because I love teaching and that’s a passion for me,” she said. ​“It makes my heart swell, and honestly it helps to keep me kind of grounded when I’m not feeling my best. Because it brings me back to like, ​‘why am I working? What am I doing? Why am I Zooming a million hours a week?’ And then you tutor and you’re like, ​‘this is why, because you want to the kids to have the best opportunity that they can to grow.’ But then also I feel great.”

In Franco’s experience, anyone can tutor, and everyone does. ​“I see people from all walks of life tutoring,” she said. ​“We have high schoolers. We have college students. We have doctors, nurses, psychologists. We have musicians, artists, and we even have teachers, so they literally spend all day long teaching and then they come to New Haven Reads, and they tutor. It’s wild, right? But that’s passion.”

Another aspect of New Haven Reads’s community outreach, which Franco said is in its ​“baby stages,” is Future Teachers Club, aimed at New Haven high school students interested in becoming a teachers. It will offer training in tutoring as well as lessons on teaching strategies that might ready them for a career in education.

“It’s my version of community,” said Franco. ​“We really need teachers right now, and there’s a terrible shortage, so why not help sow the seeds that already are starting to flower and bloom?”

Tutor coordinator is another of Franco’s roles, interviewing and training interested applicants and acting as their main point of contact while filling in as a tutor herself when there are holes in the schedule. Covid gave the nonprofit many challenges they worked hard to overcome, including keeping their tutor program going. Most recently, they decided to spend the month of January online when there was a rise in cases after the holidays. They are gearing up to go back in person with their programs this week.

“It’s been a really crazy time,” said Franco. ​“We had to train all of the people who didn’t teach online.” She is looking forward to returning to Bristol Street, with Covid distances and precautions in effect. Tutoring will return to its 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. daily schedule, and book bank operations will continue throughout in the day, with teachers often coming in and picking out books for their classroom libraries. (That service is also offered online for teachers who cannot make it there in person.)

The idea of free books seems too good to be true to most people, and it is one of the aspects of New Haven Reads that gets Franco most excited both personally and professionally. 

“I leave work every day with like five books at least, and now when people visit my house I have one part of my bookshelf that is all book bank material, and so people leave my house with books now” she said. ​“It’s so good. It really is like the dream because you go in there and every book is free, and whatever you love you can take and then you can bring back the ones you finish and you’re not cluttering your house, which is another awesome thing.”

Free books in walking distance of your home is yet another aspect of New Haven Reads that Franco is determined to get the community aware of. 

“A lot of people don’t know it exists,” she said. ​“For me coming in now, I’m brand new. I keep saying ​‘I’m green on the scene,’ but it would be so easy for high school students to come over and find something. Adults too.”

Add in the other programs New Haven Reads provides — like its pre‑K and kindergarten programs taught by certified teachers — and the wealth of new ideas just waiting to be realized, and Franco is nearly bursting with pride. ​“There’s just a lot of really positive things coming out of this nonprofit,” she said.

Positivity and enthusiasm are engrained in every cell of Franco’s being, and she is thrilled to be in a position to put those qualities to good use in her new job.

“I think that my approach to professionalism is very different from other people’s,” she said. ​“When I was younger, I used to tone it down.… ​‘You can’t smile, and you have to sound very professional and use big words and show them that you did a really good job on your SATs,’ ” Franco recalled people saying to her. ​“My perception of leadership is so different. I get my hands dirty … but I am also going to be silly. I’m going to send you smiley faces,” she added with a laugh. ​“Why can’t I be nice and fun and be my bubbly self and also project leadership?” 

Franco considers herself a ​“very optimistic person,” though she noted ​“there will always be someone out there in the world who says, ​‘why are you smiling? what are you so happy about?’ and I’m like, ​‘what are you so mad about? Why can’t I be happy?’”

Franco’s dedication to remaining positive and optimistic and being wholly and unabashedly her own person has been embraced and encouraged, not only by New Haven Reads, but by the New Haven arts community that she has been a part of for the past few years.

“The arts community in New Haven can’t be beat, I mean, it’s out of this world beautiful,” she said. ​“I did find an artistic family. I arrived, and no one said, ​‘why are you so happy?’ They were like ​‘you are shining, girl,’ and I was like ​‘I am!’ They’re just so nice.” 

FaTE has not played a gig since the Sunday in the Park event at Edgerton Park in September 2021, and Franco herself has been somewhat quiet musically. 

“I feel like for three months I didn’t pick up an instrument, but once I do pick up an instrument it’s so therapeutic,” she said. Rehearsals for the band have been limited due to time and Covid, but Franco has seen her bandmates socially and they are talking about releasing another single sometime this year. She is also leaning toward releasing a few solo tunes. 

“Everybody made a pandemic mix tape, right?” she said with a laugh. ​“I have couple songs that I want to release as a solo project which will be really fun.” Seeing it written in this article, she said, ​“will light a fire under my butt.” 

In addition to singing the praises of her FaTE bandmates, Franco is eager to return to collaborations with friends and fellow musicians, such as Dylan McDonnell and chad browne-springer of Phat A$tronaut, as well as many others. ​“The community that we have is so beautifully tight knit,” she said. ​“It’s just so nice. It’s not elitist. It’s very accepting of everyone, and everyone is just trying to do the best they can for each other supporting each other.”

And now Franco is asking for the support of those friends in that community on another level.

“I want musicians and artists to show up physically in a meaningful way, because we can cry about what our community looks like all day long,” Franco said. ​“We might even ignore the fact that we have such a huge disparity in education between our Black and Latino students and our White students, and our private school students versus our state school students. We could ignore all that or we can help, right?… It might take a little bit of courage to get your butt out of the house and learn a new skill or do something that makes you a little uncomfortable, but once you are in it and you’re doing the thing that you know is making a difference, then it’s magic. You can change your community. You can change the world one person at a time, but you have to get out. You have to do something. You can’t just sit there scrolling your Instagram and being sad.” 

“It’s my call to arms!” she yelled while smiling widely. ​“Let’s go!”

Please visit the New Haven Reads website for more information about its programs and volunteer opportunities as well as its book bank hours.