Lessons Learned - Thank you to Everyone!

I cannot express how much I learned from my Italian teachers, Italian students, and Italian Family. They all taught me incredibly important lessons during my stay – I can never thank them all enough for the wonderful experience with so many wonderful lessons!

Lessons Learned from my Teachers:

It is important to always be aware of yourself as a teacher so that you understand your relationship with your students and what kind of dedications you have as a teacher. In Italy the students remain in their room throughout all the grades and teachers move around the school to the different classrooms. So, as an observer, during some of the days, I would notice that the same students acted differently depending on the teacher present. Depending on the teachers’ form of teaching, discipline, and relationship with the students the students would act accordingly. In short, it really isn’t the students but the teachers who are responsible what is happening in the classroom – including student behavior.

Teachers should set rules early in order to avoid chaos and issues that arise throughout the year that you, as a teacher, could easily avoid with set rules. And they should be simple so that they are easily understood and followed.

Always be willing to learn more about teaching, education, and your subject area. Antonella, the English teacher of the students I taught, was always willing to learn more about English from be and about the differences between British and American English. Also, when we had our English Language Learners meeting many teachers attended which shows their great desire to learn more about teaching native languages to non –native speakers. It is refreshing to see teachers, like I did in Italy, want to learn more about teaching!

Lessons Learned from my Students:

Be brave and bold! The students were always so willing to participate even though they were nervous to speak English in front of a native speaker. The very first day of meeting me they introduced themselves in English and their curiosity, bravery, and love only grew from there. They are fearless!

Many of my students were very smart in their studies but they were even smarter in doing unproductive, doing bad things like cheating, copying, etc. – like any other student their age in America. So, as a teacher it is important to really pay attention to what is happening in your classroom.

Always do your best as a teacher to engage your students with the information you need to teach and their interests – that is how you will become invested, interested in what you are teaching and they will, you know, learn!

Lessons Learned from my Italian Family:

Be patient and go with the flow as often as you can! Many times I did not know how to get somewhere, where I was going, what I was doing, what was being said – but, I just gave in and let someone else be in control and did not worry about what was happening…believe it or not, I – Crystal Ann Yakel, went with the flow! And I tried so many new things and did things that scared me, but I did them! I was more patient, more go with the flow, and brave – three things I would like to do more in my daily life.

The second lesson I really learned is one that I am so glad to have experienced. I am very busy and I give my time to many different things. Being with my Italian family has taught me that it is important to help others and give your time but it is also very important to really give your time to those who most need it, will appreciate it, and give your time to things that make you happy. My host family spent a lot of time with family, friends, and they gave time to themselves. So, I would like to say “no” to some things, not run myself down, and give more time to my family and friends! This lesson from my Italian host family was the most important lesson I learned while in Italy!

Thank you to everyone who made my trip so wonderful! Goodbye for now Italy, but do not worry - I will be back! Ciao!

Bocce Ball Time in Bologna and Florence

Thursday June 2nd was a holiday in Italy – 150th anniversary of Italy becoming a republic. So, no school! Lorenzo had a bocce ball competition in Bologna so the whole family went to watch. It was a lot of fun to watch the competition. Lorenzo lost but he still played well and it was a great time with the family for the day! After the competition all the players and families have a large lunch together, talk, and play games in the afternoon. Later in the day Andrea, Lia, family friends of theirs, and I took a long bike ride out to a WWF wild life preservation area, spent some time there looking around, and then we rode our bikes home in the rain – I loved every minute of the trip because I enjoyed being with them and being outside!

The next monring on June 3rd the study abroad students left for Florence. . We arrived in Florence adn traveled directly to our hostel which was very nice and it has free breakfast too (free is always good, especially when everything is so expensive!). My group left the hostel, walked through the markets, and about the city – seeing the sites! We crossed the Ponte Vecchio which provided us with a beautiful view of the city river and then of course we had gelato (really can’t go ten blocks with out it!). We then found the galleria academia where there is the beautiful art work of Lorenzo Bartolini as well as Michelangelo’s original David statue. The history we learned about the art work and David’s statue was wonderful! After a full day of walking about the city we dressed to go to a restaurant we had made reservations at earlier in the day. We had a wonderful dinner. Ihad amy first dish of Alfredo pasta in Italy and it was served with peas – it was delicious! After dinner we went to an Americanized Italian college bar  named the “The Lion’s Fountain.” They had shots for different colleges including KU (it was a prarie fire shot so I certaintly didn’t have that one!) We then went to a club called “Twice.” We danced a lot and we generally just had a very nice night out in Florence.

The next day mosto f our group was signed up to go on an out of town excursion so Taylor and I explored the city for the day. We walked almost 6 hours around Florence seeing so many sites – Piazzale de Michelangelo (which has the most beautiful view of Florence), S. Croce, an arch way (it looked like the coolest, tallest arch way on our map but it totally turned out o be a complete fail but we had a good laugh about it), we tried to see this gigantic garden (it was totally fortressed in and we probably spent 30 minutes just trying to find an entrance – which we never did), the Piazzale de Donatello, Basilica di San Lorenzo (it was built in 393!), Palazzo de Vecchio (it has some very beautiful and historic statues), and Dante’s house. Everything was of course beautiful and it was wonderful to see so much history. In teh evening we had a nice dinner, gelato, and night in with cards and lots of laughter.

During our last day in Florence we went to Catholic mass under the archbishop in Florence’s Duomo. It was quite an experience! Afterwards we headed to the Uffizi Art Gallery for a wonderful guided tour of art by Botticelli, Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and other artists of the Renissance and Baroque periods. It was such a great experience! We had lunch after the Uffizi at the pizzeria where the Jersey Shore peeps are working (Jersey Shore’s new season is being currently taped in FLorence). It was the Jersey Shore’s day off but it was fun! We headed back towards the hostel after lunch. But before we returned we wished to do our last minute shopping. However, mother nature would not let us havour way. IT began to rain and hail like I have never seen before! It was crazy! We were completely soaked and the streets were so flooded that just within the hour we had to find a different way to get to the bus, for the bus to get to us, and for u sto get home in the bus. It was a terrible rain but we all just laughed…at least mosto f the time!

We had a great weekend and I wouldn’t change a thing about it really  (besides that it was our last weekend in Italy L ) – it was wonderful!

Lessons on Holidays

During my time in the schools I have taught my own lessons, observed several different teachers as well as co-teach english grammar and literacy almost everyday of school. After my 2 days of my scrabooking lesson I taught two more lessons concerning holidays celebrated in America.

I taught the studetns about the history and traditions, activities and food conected to Independence Day and Thanksgiving. For the Independence Day lesson I read aloud for the students the information I had gathered (the information was also printed out on a worksheet for the students). The students were asked two questions where they stated what they would do and what they would eat if they were in teh United States during the 4th of July. Then I sang the National anthem and they filled in teh missing lyrics on their worksheet. IF was difficult for them (and me! – I was so nervous to sing inf ront of them) so I also read through the lyrics twice.

For the Thanksgiving lesson I did thesame thing for the first solida lesson by reading aloud (it is nice for them to hear a native speaker) and then the students answered questions based on facts from the reading. We did not have time to make “turkey hands” because we had a small party. I brought some dessert and gifts for the students adn they gave me a wonderful picture of their class w7 signature, and a very sweet messgae on a poster. I will treasure it!

Vallauri High School and beautiful Verona

On Tuesday, May 31st, the last day of May, I went on my “field trip” for this study abroad program. Each student travels to a different school or performs, live, a chidlren’s book for the elementary students. I chose to attend Vallauri for a day of school. Vallauri is a vocational school for students interested in fashion design, electronics, or mechanics. Vallauri was quite the experience…

The 5 stuy abroad students who attende this field trip were split into 3 groups. Taylor and I follone one English teacher for the first 3 hours of school. The teacher’s two classes were English classes for the second level of high school. They were all female students because the students are divided by their vocation and typically all classes are either all female or all male because the girls want to do the fashion design and the boys want to work with the mechanics. We were just supposed to observe but our teacher wanted us to teach. So, Taylor and I talked about the simple past by using pictures of past events to express the simple past in sentences on the board. She used pictures on her computer and I used pictures from a photo album I created for my host family. Those two classes were perfectly fine except our teacher of English really spoke down about the students in front of them, saying things like “they are lazy, they don’t know very much,” etc. Having experienced this in the middle school I see it as a part of a more open culture but in this case it seemed to be much more derogatory and at the same time, to a degree, true. It was obvious with their level of English being lower than my 1st level middle schoolers, that even had the students not learned much from their previous teachers, they were not learning anything with this current teacher – but in her negative comments she never took any blame and she honestly did not seem to care if they learned from her or not.

After these first 2 classes our teacher’s 3rd class went to see a film created by some of the students with disabilities in the school. It was a beautiful short film but before we watched it the teacher of English told us not to expert much, and that it would probably not be very good. At this point I had had it with this teacher. There were not cultural differences or excuses to excuse her behavior. It was simply ridiculous. After these classes the teacher gave us a tour of the fashion wing of the fashion sector, laboratories of the school. The fashion sector was wonderful with many needed tools and the students’ work was very impressive – their talent is obvious. The teacher of English then left us with the mechanics/electronics teacher as it was the end of her day. The mechanics/ electronics teacher was very nice and gave us a nice tour of his sector of the building. Overall, by the tours, it seems the school really can provide for the vocational needs of the students but it struggles – at least in its English department - to provide for the students’ general education needs which was demonstrated by my first English teacher in Valluri as well as my second English teacher of whom I will speak of next.

Lastly, we have a sort of grand finale to the school day. Taylor and I were passed on to a different English for the last hour of the day. She told us on the way to class that these students in the next class were terrible adn the worst in the school. We arrived to the class adn ys the dsutdnets were a little unruly and continued to become more so throuhout the class but, I personally believe, the teacher did very little to help her situation. SHe did not create even a semblance of order in her classroom and she did not command respect – so she never received it. At one point the students were being so unruly – doing their own thing, leaving the class to get drinks from the vending machines, being disrespectful in general – that she stopped going over a test they had taken previously and made the most unruly students translate Italian sentences into English on the blackboard. One of the students did not know how to complete his translation in English so he turned to me and asked, “help?” and I said “no” because this was obviously set up as a punishment for him and whether I agreed or not it was not my place to interfere. The student, unhappy about this, called me a bad name in Italian, the students laughed and of course the teacher flipped a lid. She began writing in the class book (similar to a diario from the middle schools where a teacher writes attendante adn disciplinary actions). The student was upset by this and continued to say in Italian “it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t under stand” etc. He was told to continue but the class only became worse. It came to a point where the student who called me a bad name was so out of control – at one point stealing her pen from her hand as she wrote yet again another disiciplinary note for him – that the principal or another head figure had to be called into the class. It was a mess!

I udnersand that I do not teach “difficult students” on a daily basis and so I do not completely under stand what some of these teachers experience but I can safely say it is not only the students  that are responsible for their learning and for their behavior in the classroom but it is the teacher’s responsiblity tot o help students learn and manage their behavior in the classroom. The situations I experienced can be easily experienced in hundreds of classrooms accross the United States. However sad the experience was with apathetic teachers (and students – really as a result) I am glad that I had the experience in order to remind myself of the difficulties in teaching as well as remind myself that not everyone has a passion for teahcing and for learning – the two very things I wish to change, whever I teach.

After such a tiring and trying experience I had relief by going to Verona with my host mom. We had a wonderful time visiting the city including the Duomo, the bridges, tomba dei Giulietta, the house of Romeo, the various piazzas (all very beautiful!), the areana (colesium of Verona), and the casa di Giuiletta! We had such a great time visiting all of these monuments, taking photos at Giulietta’s house with her statue (I of course wrote Juliet an “electronic letter” and wrote on the wall.), and just talking as we walked around in the beautiful city of Verona! I can’t thank Lia enough for being so wonderful and for taking me to Verona!