MY KIDS GROW UP AND THEY ARE PRETTY SPECIAL: VERONICA & THE BEST CONSEQUENCE OF STUDYING

Veronica and her Erasmus mates in Innsbruck

To grow up and find your own place in the world is never easy, especially because that is something you start doing when you are a teenager, which is a very complicated moment in everybody’s life. Well, complicated as well as exciting.  This series of posts dedicated to my former students and their after-school experiences has the aim to help my present students to become more aware of what expects them out there once they leave the safe environment of high school and to give them suggestions and advice on how to brace themselves.

Today it is Veronica’s turn. She’s had quite a brilliant academic career so far. She can be a model,  an inspiring example with her will strength and unsatiable curiosity. Recently, she was even awarded a very special prize by the President of the Italian Republic,  Sergio Mattarella. 

Hi! I’m Veronica and Mrs Spila was my English teacher, though only during my last year at grammar school. I spent a nice period there and I was really satisfied. My school career was quite brilliant and I got my degree with the highest grade… but not because I love studying… just thanks to my willpower.

In my life I’ve often changed my mind about what I wanted to do in the future. When I was in  middle school, my dream was to become an archaeologist. This is why I chose grammar school. But I loved also literature, reading good books and writing, too. So I thought “why not a journalist?”. Yes, good idea. But I loved cinema, as well. So I decided I might have been a film critic.
 Actually,  I’ve always loved lots of things,  but none was my “true love” and, in short, after leaving high school, I decided to study Economy at University.

You maybe wonder why. At that moment it was a very simple decision actually, because I knew exactly what I wanted in my life: I wanted to be a manager. Not an easy goal, but that  was my ambition.

BECAUSE TEACHERS MATTER: HAPPY WORLD TEACHERS' DAY!

I still remember my primary school teacher, her sweet,  authoritative style and her fundamental teachings. I owe to her my starting reading books very early, though coming from a humble family and from a house with very few books inside. She gave me my first two novels,  when I was 7 or 8, Little Women and Cuore, thus  giving start to a never-ending passion for literature. 

A few years later, I started loving everything British when an extravagant, cheerful, colourful teacher of English entered my classroom.  I was 12  then, and I became curious,  eager to learn that language so foreign to me and to discover more and more about Britain, which I would only visit at 21 for the first time, but which I started dreaming of since our first lesson together. 

MONEY, FAME & YOUTH

Young people, money and fame

Ask young people about their top life goals and the answer is clear, resounding and a bit worrying: they want to be rich and famous. Worrying for me as an educator, as an adult. To be ambitious is not wrong a priori, of course. I constantly work  at stimulating teenagers' wills to set goals and reach them, to set them high and do their best to pursue them. But I'm also sure that money and fame are not naturally connected to happiness. I am convinced that "money doesn't buy happiness"  is not just a popular saying, but an old truth. This is something my students and I often discuss about but it is not so easy to convince them since they are sent hammering messages persuading them that the opposite is true: money and fame are the keys to happiness.

WATCH THE SUNRISE, DREAM YOUR LIFE, DANCE SHAMELESSLY: SUMMER ASSIGNMENTS FROM AN ITALIAN TEACHER TO HIS STUDENTS GO VIRAL

In the last couple of days, these summer tasks went viral. They were posted by an Italian teacher, Cesare Catà, on his facebook page  and from there they made it to the national press and were spread all over the Net. What's special in them? See it for yourself.  I've translated them for you. Useless to add, I'd sign them myself.

In the mornings, sometimes, go and walk along the seashore in complete solitude: look how the sunlight reflects on it and, thinking about what you most love in life, feel happy.

Try to use all the new words we learnt this year: more things you can say, more things you can think;  and more things you can think, more free you are.

Read as much as you can. But not because you must. Read because the summer inspires adventures and dreams and  reading you feel like flying sparrows. Read because it is the best form of rebellion you have (for good reading advice, ask me)

Avoid all things, situations and people that make you negative or empty: look for stimulating situatuations and the company of friends who can enrich you, understand you and appreciate you for what you are.

THE GOOD AND THE BAD OF BEING A TEACHER

In the latest days I have been writing two very different pieces which contain reflections connected to my job. They are about students and teachers, not about methodologies or technicalities. In fact,  what I am most interested in in my job is the chance we have to build relationships, to communicate and interact with young people. 

The bad or ... they say it is because they are bored

My husband comes into the kitchen, sees my laptop on - I'm writing final reports for the end of the school year - and he just drops there: when you have a moment, google "baby doccia" (Italian for "baby shower"). Why? What is it? I ask, but he takes his coffee and goes away without adding one word more. He knows me well. I immediately stop, whatever I'm doing, and google those words apparently meaningless together. I click on the first link and I'm immediately disturbed by the picture. I don't want to see a video of young people having sex in a toilet! But I start reading the article and it announces a TV programme about teens and sex...at school. Ok, now I understand my husband's suggestion.  I work with teens and he knows how interested I am when it comes to school and education.
This is a shocking report from a woman journalist which will be on a Sky Tg 24. It's not the first one, there have been similar ones recently.  It's the story of a few girls (14-year-olds),  going to a private school in Milan and having sex between lessons in the toilets with any boy who asks them via txt messages. Baby prostitutes, not for need but for their own choice, for fun they say, because lessons are too boring. Not enslaved, nor bullied, nor forced.

AND, THEN, THEY COME BACK ...

I know,  I've been often very critical to my students here at FLY HIGH! Who can forget my disappointment while in Dublin or Malta on school trips! There are posts here and there about school and about my constant sense of frustration or disillusionment, if you click on the tag school. To be honest, there are also rare ones in which I write about successful moments, lessons or activities, but as I just said, they are pretty rare. 

What I want to discuss today is a part of my job I still feel quite uncomfortable with. To be a teacher includes a very stressful task,  which is to  assess  and evaluate, and that is what makes everything so complicated in terms of relationship. If only I could give my lessons and avoid tests, marks, reports and final decisions that would make my job perfect. Education without evaluation. This must sound irrational or utopian to many of you,  but that would make everything much, much easier, you know. Will the students learn, anyway? I'm sure they will,  somehow.