This morning there was no Nick on Skype...weird....
I was all prepared to walk to school, but at the last minute I saw a bus, and hopped on it. Why didn't I walk? My knees were bothering me...so, I was lazy and took the bus. I felt bad when I asked them to stop at the wrong bus stop, only to realize that it was the stop right before mine.
My first class was Lilla's 4th years. When I got there, they were still taking a test. By taking a test I mean that they were all cheating and copying each others' answers. When two of them turned in their tests, I saw two of them had the exact same answer, and I asked Lilla about it. She said, "I told them that if they did not understand then they could ask!" WHAT?!?!? You are ENCOURAGING cheating?!?!? Then she told them not to do it, but that was pointless. She then made a few of the boys come up and start talking to me about the First Amendment, and of course kept saying, "Elyse, ask them questions!" They did talk to me a bit, but then we were able to break it up, and I did end up having a rather fruitful conversation with some of the students. We talked about freedom of speech in the U.S., etc. They asked me why we say we are free, but we treated the Native Americans so harshly; why are we a democracy, but treated them unfairly! I explained that this is not something that we can explain, and something many Americans ask as well! Then they started a conversation about gay marriage and adoption. The wonderful thing about these conversations is that I never have to express my thoughts or feelings because they CAN and WILL talk about things when they are not constantly being interrupted or thrown off track. It was an interesting mix of opinions though. A few said that they are okay with gay marriage because who is the government to tell someone that they cannot love another person or marry them. HOWEVER, they did NOT agree with gay adoption because according to them, a family is a mom + dad+ children, and it is not okay to have two moms or two dads. The other students felt that neither gay marriage nor gay adoption were acceptable on the premise of the Bible and its position on homosexuality; not to mention the Catholic church and the Pope. Then Lilla asked me, "how can America consider itself a true democracy when it supports the death penalty?" EXCUSE ME, WHAT?!?!? How is this a legitimate question? How can you question American democracy based on the fact that some states support the death penalty? **Nick would like for me to point out that the truest democracy in human history, Athens, practiced the death penalty (e.g. Socrates)** I had to explain that this was a state by state decision, and that the democracy part of it was that we each have the right to vote for these things, or the right to vote for representatives that support it or do not. This was my simplistic explanation, but she would not have it! She kept saying that Italians would never support the death penalty, and that even if someone did something that Americans consider worthy of the death penalty, the Italians would think that there was still good in that person. Okay, I do not believe this; this is such an over generalization, as is the idea that ALL Americans support it. Also, I think this speaks to the Italian lack of consequences in some situations (e.g. students leaving class, cheating, etc. without consequences; Burlusconi being able to run for office again after he was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to four years of prison, but is drawing out his appeal until the statue of limitation is over....). **I should say that on Thursday (blog to come) that Valeria agreed about these things** Then they (mainly Lilla) started saying that all Americans are liberal. I had to explain that all Americans are not liberal...all Americans are not alike...and I had to make sure that they understood this by illustrating that all Italians are not alike. All Italians do not eat pizza every day, all Italians do not vote for Burlusconi (the same way not all Americans voted for Obama...no, I am not equivocating the two people), all Italians are not in the mafia (something my students tell me all the time), etc. They seemed to understand, and I tried to encourage them not to think of all Americans in one way; not to think that when they see ONE THING on the news, that it is true of ALL Americans! Despite some of my frustrations, the students were having a WONDERFUL, insightful conversation.
Then we were off to Lilla's first year class. They were supposed to be presenting about the famous women that we gave them last week. Come to find out, Lilla did all of the work for them by printing out biographies for them to memorize, which TOTALLY defeated my assignment of find a person and answer these 7 questions about them so that you are NOT memorizing a bunch of useless knowledge. However, the students that presented, did an amazing job! I got them to put down the papers and just talk. I tried to get them to focus on the important information (e.g. Martha Graham is a famous dancer who started a company in NYC, and revolutionized modern dance. NOT who were parents were...when she was born...what jobs her parents had...etc. These would be important for an English speaker doing a report, or a 5th year doing a project, but not the first years. Teach them to seek out information in English and to boil it down to the important facts! I was super annoyed). Lilla kept interrupting them to say, "Elyse, ask them questions!" I encouraged them to speak more and then asked questions when they had finished. I primarily asked questions to the other students in the class, to check and see if they were paying attention and understanding what was being said. They did a great job with listening! At the end of class, she handed out more bios to other students, and I was highly annoyed. However, one student, A., who is the sister of a fave student at the Cosenza school, came up and asked if she had done well! She had done VERY well, and I was very proud of her!
During my break I talked to Nick, and then discovered that my next class was in an assembly until 12:30, so I was able to talk to him some more. When they did join class, we went to the lab to start the lesson. We had very little time, but we were able to review some of the things that we talked about last week, some of the differences and/or similarities between the schools, etc. Then we talked about a few slides, and we got to the slides about the subjects we study. Francesca, in a haughty tone said, "isn't it supposed to be mathS, not math?" Umm...NO...and the fact that all Italians say this drives me crazy; perhaps it is British, but I dont know. Once again, I AM AN AMERICAN!! It is shocking, I know, but I am! Then as class was ending, in a disgusted tone, with a disgusted look on her face she said, "in the U.K. they capitalize all of their school subjects. Shouldn't yours say, 'Maths'???" NO, it shouldn't...I do not recall EVER randomly capitalizing math, science, history, etc. etc. in the middle of a sentence...sure, if I am saying, "Science starts at 9." However, if I am saying, "I am going to math class at 10.", I would NEVER capitalize that. Are you seriously being so overly critical of my lessons that you are going to ask me about capitalization!?!?!? I was livid and so ready to get out of there. I need to once again emphasize that I grew up in THE UNITED STATES...we did NOT study British English!!! We did study American English, and if you need to know why, see the American Revolution! Study THAT in British history, and then you'll know why I do not know and worship all things British. This is not to say that I do not respect the British and their language, but I simply did not study this, and have no way of knowing all of the ins and outs of the British English language.
I left school, took the bus home, stopped at the store for turkey, had lunch, talked to my momma, talked to April on skype for about an hour (whaaa????), talked to Kelly on skype, and then Mrs. Malissa! It was a WONDERFUL day for skype! Kelly told me that Gracie is trying out for cheerleading this week, so I started a week of marathon emails to Gracie, hoping to offer her some encouragement. I spent most of the evening working on blogs, lesson planning, talking to Nick, and I did get to go out for a nice walk!
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