Teachers Who Seem to "Get It"

Today, we met up early in the morning to go on another class excursion. It's always fun to use our bus passes and go on rides around town.

We visited what you would call the district office for schools in Rome near Piazza Vittorio. Even though school doesn't start for public general schools until next week, our meeting today was with some middle school teachers, whose teaching fields ranged from history to language and from English to geography. The most interesting aspect about this particular school district/system though is that they have one of the highest, if not the highest, percentage of children from immigrant backgrounds in their schools. With all of Italy's challenge with immigrant integration in recent memory, this school has had increasing time in the spotlight to highlight the steps they are taking to ensure that all children, particularly those from immigration backgrounds, have the opportunity to maximize their education.

We spent the morning in one of the classrooms learning about the structure of the Italian education system and asking the teachers questions about immigrant integration, classroom strategies, and the roles that teachers play in encouraging the children to achieve their best.

My interests were in understanding the role of higher education in social mobility. What we've learned so far though is that most students, particularly immigrant children who may not understand the system or have the financial means to attend, do not pursue higher education. In fact, the teachers told us that most first-generation immigrant students barely make through high school.

As Brukab and I have talked about our research project on access to higher education, our gung-ho American student perspective is that higher education is the key to social mobility. However, for many students in Italy, the opportunity to get an industrial job leads to better salaries than many academics with university degrees, so higher education becomes another option that only those passionate about topics like education and law pursue despite the poor salaries.

For me, though, I see two differing perspectives on social mobility in Italy. On one hand, there is the approach of people who think first about money, whether by choice or by circumstance. With the existence of these opportunities, why would you go to university? This seems to be a widely accepted belief. However, the second approach is to attend university and graduate with a degree in a certain field which, as we also learned in our discussion with the former director of Italy's department of intercultural education, can open up more opportunities for jobs outside of manual labor. In Italy, getting a university degree in no way guarantees a higher salary after graduation, so it seems some of the teachers almost discourage students from attending university.

While it may seem like the approach I'm taking to understanding the challenges to accessing higher education in Italy is too much assumption on my part (that higher education is the key to social mobility) given that it is possible to get a well-paying job without a university degree (albeit probably with limited growth and room for advancement in the long run), much of my frame of reference has been shaped by my own educational experiences and also by what I researched on during my first trip to Berlin in 2007. I wrote my final paper on how the development of social, economic, and political factors in 21st century Europe have created what Jeremy Rifkin called, "the European Dream." Although that paper glossed over many of the underlying problems in Europe (particularly a lot of the issues I've learned from my Berlin fellowship and this class), it emphasized how changing identities in Europe influenced the opportunities for social mobility that young Europeans had through higher education and exchange in Europe. I focused on Generation E (or Generation Europe), a privileged group of young people who maybe grew up in Italy, went to school in France, and then started working in Belgium.

In many ways, that's why when I think of the perspective that university only leads to lower wages, I wonder if they are simply looking at Italy, but not considering Europe as a whole when there are other opportunities around the continent. I'm curious to know how kids here think of their own identities (especially those second generation immigrants--are they Italian? Are they citizens of their parents' countries of origin?) and also that affects their educational choices.

As such, that experience has in many ways shaped my thinking about the educational opportunities for any student in Italy, regardless of their background. Of course, every student has different interests and needs though, so I understand that this approach doesn't work for everyone. But from what we've heard from the teachers, it is critically important to emphasize and support students in their education as they move up the ladder, so that they are fully aware of their opportunities. Claudia, the teacher who seemed to be more in charge than the rest, answered my question about what roles they, even as middle school teachers, should and do play in encouraging young children, particularly those from immigration backgrounds, to pursue as much as education as they can. She emphasized that the last year of middle school, right before they head to high school, is the most important time in making sure students are well aware of their options and will continue on with their studies instead of dropping out as some do.

As we walked out of the classroom, I talked with Silvia, the English teacher at the middle school, and asked her how long she had taught at this school.

"15 years," she said. "And that was before the government began implementing the immigration integration policies that we had already been practicing for a few years."

I asked her what changes she had seen in all her time at the school, particularly in regards to immigration. "Much more," she said, "but it used to be easy and there were few problems. Now the government's policies have made immigration a much more difficult process."

The challenges that we've learned about, from our visits to the refugee center and the personal anecdotes we've carried away from our interactions with people, have helped Brukab and I sort of fine-tune our research questions and approach to now understand "what does higher education mean to individuals" and "how does higher education factor into social mobility." We're going to be talking with some students, particularly first and second generation immigrant children as well as privileged and non-privileged immigrant children to compare and contrast their views on educational opportunity and how their identity plays a role in where they go. I'm looking forward to it, but we're running out of time.

Anyway, after our time at the school, we went to an Eritrean restaurant that Brukab had gone to with a couple of his friends from UW. We all gathered around on the couch and chairs, and as we waited for our food, we had a discussion about the things we'd seen and experienced from the past week. It was a nice way of debriefing some of the sad things we'd seen in the refugee center.

The food though was delicious. You eat with your hands, so yes, I did wash my hands in the bathroom. With soap too, don't worry.

There was so much food that we had to pack leftovers, but Brukab left so fast afterwards that he totally forgot to grab a box to go. So no leftovers. Only more pasta. =P

At first, my plan was to head up to the Etruscan Museum in Villa Borghese to see the famous man and wife sarcophagus, but there's been way too much to finish work-wise and the trip would've been long. Plus I needed to buy groceries. I think I'll save that museum for tomorrow.

Anyway, as we were standing at the bus stop, Manka made a comment about this photo and told us what it says: "You want a spicy evening? Find an ethnic restaurant." We thought it was strange that there are ads for international food and going to an ethnic restaurant, but Italy has so many problems with accepting what they would consider "others." Still though, it's a pretty interesting picture.

Tomorrow, we're spending our whole day in class, so it will be a productive discussion day, I think. I do need to do laundry again soon though, and unfortunately, our washing machine sucks. I still need to figure out a way to do laundry. Anyway, it's nuts to think that I'm going into my last weekend in Rome! I'm on the fence about going back right now. I'd like to travel more, but just for travel, less work. Ehh...we'll see. =]