My first teaching experience in Italian school

Ciao 🇮🇹 / hello 🇬🇧 / labas 🇱🇹 ! I haven’t share any new experiences for a while here… my colleague Ángel Jesús Jiménez de los Santos are more active in news reporting than me… 🔥 oh well 🤠 due to #covid-19 outbreak in many countries, all the world is under the lockdown (close enough to Springfield town from the “Simpsons movie”) and we are suspended from our normal daily activities too… But I am not going to talk about this “crowned virus” here – he is taken a looooot of attention for a few months already… everywhere. For this article I will go back couple months ago, to February, when I went to one of public schools in Faenza to teach kids about Baltic States 🇪🇪 🇱🇻 🇱🇹 .

Actually, I had to have these lessons even earlier, but some kids from the class went to the mountains, next week I went on a short holidays, so I finally – I was the teacher on the romantic Friday 14th and ordinary Monday 17th of February (no, I wasn’t looking for an Italian Valentine in a middle school…). If you remember well, in November I was observing English lessons for two days in the same school – so, I would be able to know their level (even tho, my native language isn’t English too, probably, you have notice it). I prepared all the material for the 3 lessons: PowerPoint presentation about 3 countries (with many pictures, so it would be more easy for kids to understand), a list with keywords translated to Italian, classwork’ exercises and homework. I have to mention, that the kids were from “scuola media 2nd grade”. Unfortunately, from my own experience I can say that many people doesn’t know these countries (no matter in which part of the world I was asked the question: where you from?) … It hurts even more when someone says “oh, it’s Russia!”. NO, it’s not Russia. Let me ask you – in which century are you living? 🤦‍♀️ Anyway, I really hope that those kids from my lessons are going to remember something, at least some specific meals or where we are located.

Even though, I showed two different maps from the beginning and later another map with each country and I started my lessons from the North (Estonia) going to the South (Lithuania) – half of the kids couldn’t identify all 3 Baltic States correctly in the empty map… 🙍 at least, all of them chose the right area, near the Baltic Sea. 😁 No matter how you are trying, how much effort you are putting, it’s quiet hard to keep almost 30 kids’ attention, yes? There is always one or two little “bad asses” who will distracting the whole class, probably – this is the reason number.1 which is keeping me away from the teachers job. But I was really happy that some kids were asking various questions and looked really interested 🙋 – my work paid off anyway. 🤗 In total, I showed more than 70 slides of “a little bit of everything”: location, language, currency, landscape & nature, climate, touristic & UNESCO objects, typical food and etc. For some other things – they have the geography book 😏.

Overall, it was funny experience from the first minutes: I came to the school and I told one lady (who works there) that I have an appointment with geography teacher Mrs. X (privacy thing 😶 ). She asked me: “are you someone’s mother?” … Well… Not yet… ahhahaha. Probably, if you are not one of the parents – there is no point for you to go to the school… 🤣 Anyway, I told her: “no, we will be working together in the lessons” , but deep inside I was a little bit confused about the fact that I might looked as a mother … I am still a kid (in my heart, at least…)! 😨 another funny thing happened the next lesson: teacher uploaded all my lessons’ material for the students into their e.system, but she didn’t press the “share” button, so… the kids had a theoretical reason why they didn’t do their homework… 🤷🏻 ok, let it be. Also, it’s quiet funny how the kids are running to the front just to see the answer! At one moment I said: “ragazzi, in this slide you can find the answer to the question number 10.” One girl asked me if it’s allowed to come closer to the blackboard? Of course, please. So… half of the class like a puppies started to run 🏃 🏃‍♀️ In the end, I quiet enjoyed all this experience, I am glad if I am able to teach anything to anyone and I would repeat it again 🏫 📖 💻