So, at 12:51 this morning, I officially turned 27. I was born at 5:51 p.m. CST, so that was this morning in Italy! I had my momma call me at that exact time! :) So, I was talking to Nick and then talked to my momma! yay!!
Thursday was a wonderful day; days at the school in Cosenza are usually wonderful days! It started with Valeria's class in the lab finishing the Civil Rights lesson! They were supposed to bring information about MLK Jr. and such, but only two girls that were there yesterday brought info., and then one girl who was not even there found out about the assignment and prepared! I love her! Valeria eventually stopped the lesson and gave then a stern, appropriate, yet firm and much needed talk! I understood most of what she said, and for once I 100% agreed with and supported the Italian teacher's discipline! She explained that she chose this class for this "project" and they were not doing anything to enhance the opportunity. We were able to have a wonderful discussion nonetheless. I found a clip of the last 5ish minutes of MLK's speech that had Italian subtitles, so I let them watch that too! I was so excited to have found this clip! We discussed how inspiring it is; his tone of voice; are there other people in history who inspired this sort of hope and movement; etc. It was great, and they gave me some of an Italian history lesson! Valeria also taught me that just because you are born in Italy, does not give you citizenship like it does in the U.S. Here you HAVE to be born to TWO Italian citizens...I thought that was interesting!
My second class was Patrizia's class, and we did the same presentation and watched the MLK video! They were very interactive and seemed to enjoy the video! Discussing Civil Rights and MLK Jr. has made me reflect on all of the things we know about that time in history! It has been an interesting journey to look at all of this again and relearn the things I knew! It brings some things into perspective and has caused me to really reflect on how far we may or may not have come!
What I am about to say is potentially controversial, but I hope I can explain myself well! A lot of the Italian teachers have made the comment that they think Barack Obama is the culmination of Dr. King's speech. I have to respectfully disagree with them though. Dr. King said that he wanted his children to be "judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." How can Barack Obama be the culmination of that dream when there are people who voted for him JUST BECAUSE he is African-American and there are others who did NOT vote for him JUST BECAUSE he is African-American. I am not saying that everyone feels this way; what I am saying is that the people that voted in these two manners, are not judging him by the content of his character and what he wanted to do to/for our country. No, they are judging him and voting or not voting for him based on the color of his skin. I was able to get the teaches to see my point of view, and to realize that America still has a long way to go with racial issues. However, I was also sure to discuss the idea that racism in the U.S. does not just exist between "white and black". Also, we began discussing some of the racial issues in Italy and Europe; thus further emphasizing that this is not a uniquely American issue.
Last class of the day was Linda's class. It was similar to the other classes because we did the Civil Rights lesson and watched the speech! It was a little more jumbled than the other classes, but overall it went well!
I was really impressed with all of my students following the lesson, taking it in, not judging me by my state's past, and being engaged in general! It was a great day of discussion and such.
As with every afternoon/night this week, I spent it inside because of the horrendous rain! Many nights I was woken up by the thunder and rattling windows! So, I worked on blogs, and talked to my Nick who was getting sick!!
THe night was uneventful, but after such a wonderful day of classes, I could not ask for anything more!
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