These first couple of weeks I’ve been visiting the local schools (Istituto Fille Maria Ausiliatrice and Liceo A. Guarasci) where I will make workshops about European Citizenship Education (ECE), attending lessons and meeting with the teachers who welcomed us in their class. As I was walking around Liceo Scientifico, waiting for my class to start, I discover a Romanian corner. What a surprise! Apparently, this corner is part of a project organized by two teachers from the school which aims at opening horizons for young people here about other places and countries. I admit I was positively impressed.
So, here I am, in the Calabrian South, finding articles about my hometown (Iasi) and other cities, as well as well-know Romanian figures. As I was reading the articles, comes one of the coordinating teachers to ask me who I am. It must have been strange for someone to be so interested in Romania 🙂 We exchange some words in my basic Italian and I find out that in Catanzaro (20 km away from here) there is a Romanian violin teacher who used to work in the National Theater of Iasi and who came to Catanzaro many years ago as a political refugee. My thought is that he must have left Romania before 1989, during the Nicolae Ceausescu dictatorship. The teacher proposes to introduce me to this man someday, so I answer yes, curious to know more about Romanian immigrants in Calabria.
As I am writing this article, I’m in the music room at the high school. Students here are quite fortunate – the music room is equipped with drums, piano and guitars. Also, I might say that the technology you find in this school is impressive – interactive boards and video projectors are available in each class, so each lesson can be designed using digital tools. I must confess that I don’t really know much about the Romanian schools nowadays, but compared to what I used to know about our system back in 2007, students in Liceo Scientifico A. Guarasci are quite lucky to have this equipment in the school.
Looking forward to my interactive workshops in the near future.
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