So, with that, we were off. The school is very close to his apartment. When we arrived, they greeted us and began showing us around. They took us to all of the classrooms, and let us sit in one class for a bit. The teacher, a male teacher, was going to be showing a younger child how to use one of the Montessori materials. This was incredibly interesting. A lot of the children, 4-year-olds, were practicing writing letters in a lined notebook. This younger child was going to be working with this Montessori material.
I cannot lie, I was rather shocked at how closed-ended these questions were. The whole activity was designed to get one answer from the child. The teacher was incredible with the children, but this was so discouraging for me. Then, one of the little girls doing letters came over and definitely walked away feeling defeated and confused about why she wasn't praised for her work. There were more areas in this classroom for play (i.e. dress up, legos, etc) compared to the school in Perugia. Then the lady came to take us away to other classrooms. We were shown to the primary classrooms, and this was fun. The first one we stopped in was Luisa Giulia's room. LG is Anna Paola's daughter. We had seen her briefly earlier when we first arrived, but now she was being so cute and shy! She was putting her head down on her desk and then whispering to her friends. She would look at me and then at Nick, and it was so adorable. They told us that they sit an older child at a desk with a younger child, in order to have them help each other. This is definitely something that I knew about Montessori, the mixed ages. However, it was nice to learn that they do this with the older age groups as well. We saw quite a few classrooms. One room we went in, they were working on math, and this one little girl explained the materials that she was using. I will say, the math materials were pretty cool, and definitely seem helpful! One room we went in, they knew we were coming, and the little boy said, "eccola" in this really sweet, excited, hushed tone. It was so adorable. Eccola means, "there she is!" In one room, a little girl explained to us that there are like 4 or 5 sections to their rooms: math, geography, and others. I will write more about this when I have gone back through my notes and organized them. The last class we went into was the oldest group of children. They were actually able to speak to us in English a bit. They were so adorable. This class and another one were preparing for some state tests. The class that spoke English was getting ready for an oral interrogation, which makes me question how different this is from a traditional Italian school. They were really cute speaking in English though! After this, we were escorted out. I did not have any questions at the moment; mainly because I was still taking it all in. I was SO grateful to have had this opportunity! I mean, two Montessori schools IN ITALY! For me, this was incredible. After we did this, it was lunch time. Nick was feeling well enough to go to a restaurant for lunch. So, he picked one, and we went. We had some WONDERFUL food. Nick had frico', which we made in Cosenza one time, and I had cappaletti in crema con prosciutto. The bread was the unsalted Gubbian bread, which I do not like, but it was good once we dipped it in some olive oil and then in the frico' sauce.
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| Mine |
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| Nick's food |
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