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!
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