The school itself is located near a train station about what seemed like 45 minutes from the center of Rome. It's located in a very relaxing, beautiful country-like town.
St. George's School is a private school, so the majority, if not all, of the students come from very wealthy families that can afford the close to 20,000 Euro annual tuition. And I thought paying for college was expensive...St. George's has about 650 students who are split into a junior school and a senior school (sort of like a elementary/middle school and high school). Even though this was their second day of school, they were so gracious in allowing us to go around the school and visit a class. Before that, they gave us a tour of the complex first, including a visit to the roof.
The school itself is extremely diverse as they have students from all different ethnic backgrounds (as shown visually by their world map of their students' origins).
It was such a stark difference between St. George's and Di Donato as both schools are extremely diverse but on opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. All the teachers at St. George's are British (it is the British International School, after all) and teach the students in English. It was very inspiring to hear all the students speaking different languages and then perfect English with a British accent. We ran into a lot of students in the halls as they were all scrambling to find their classrooms during the passing period.
One of the coolest things about this school is their incredible art program. Every corridor we walked through and every level we visited had beautiful artwork hanging on the wall. Even more impressive is the fact that all the art is created by the students themselves, both in the junior school and the senior school. Imagine great artwork lining the halls at your public high school. How neat would that be?
The art students at St. George's are definitely incredible. Some of the drawings looked so real it was like looking at a photograph. We were all extremely impressed.
Beyond arts and the other areas of knowledge (they have the IB program at St. George's too), the school encourages their students to achieve their best. The teachers have extremely high expectations of their students and the majority of the students (somewhere around 98% of them) go on to the university level, whether in Italy or elsewhere.In visiting St. George's, it gave us a glimpse into the lives of immigrants who have privileges that allow them to pursue the best education possible. As I think about doing my own research here on access to higher education, particularly for immigrant children, one of the things I will look at is the disparity between the privileged and the non-privileged among the immigrant population in Italy.
We finished our visit to St. George's by sitting in on a Theory of Knowledge (TOK) class, where the seniors were learning about their TOK essay assignment. It was interesting to watch the classroom dynamics--students sitting in cliquey pockets, chattering away while their teacher tried to speak above them. It wasn't until later that I found out the teacher was actually a substitute for the day, so that might've explained a bit of their antsy behavior. Not to mention, this was only their second day back at school.
After our school visit, Brukab and I went to the supermarket to pick up a bit more food and liquid laundry detergent. We've been having all kinds of trouble with our washing machine as it doesn't wash like we'd like it to. With powder detergent, the water doesn't go through the machine as you'd expect, so you end up with clumps of detergent on your clothes and half of your clothes no wetter than when you first put them in. It took me three cycles of almost 2 hours each last week before I finally gave up on washing my clothes with that machine.Today, I tried the liquid detergent like they suggested, and I have to say the scent of my laundry detergent is rather wonderful. However, even with the liquid detergent, my clothes that were in the middle of the pile didn't get washed or even get wet. I'm trying to run it once more as I'm running out of clean clothes again soon.
Oh, almost forgot...we had our group dinner tonight at a wonderful Italian restaurant. That was honestly the best Italian food I've had. They brought out dish after dish. It was ridiculous. I forgot to bring my camera, so I took all my pictures on Brukab's camera. When I steal them from him tomorrow, I'll upload a few pictures from the dinner soon.
Our plan for tomorrow is to head to Tivoli and visit Hadrian's Villa and Villa d'Este. It'll be a nice change of pace and let us relax a bit. Pompeii will be on Saturday and the Borghese Gallery on Sunday. I'm excited!
But for now...I need some rest. Night!
Sam
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