Teaching is a unique profession that is both challenging and rewarding. I have a great deal of respect for the educators in our country, but I have never felt particularly inclined to become a teacher myself.

When I decided I wanted to travel abroad for an extended period of time after finishing my undergrad work, I really wanted to get involved with an environmental project. I looked at seahorse preservation in Cambodia, habitat protection for tortoises in the Seychelles Islands – even frog mapping in the Ecuadorian Amazon. All of these things sounded amazing and were of great interest to me. While challenging in practice, however, many of these projects weren’t challenging to my nature (also, I found it incredibly difficult to find an organization I was comfortable with that wouldn’t completely break my pocketbook).

Teaching, I thought, would be an ideal way for me to challenge myself. I am a great student, but I often find it difficult to articulate my thoughts to other people in way that accurately conveys my sentiments. It’s one thing to just blurt out how you feel, or to beat people over the head with your agenda, but to be able to communicate in such a way that people genuinely understand you is a special thing.

I enrolled in a program that I thought would be teaching advanced English to professionals and educators. I thought it would help me to better articulate my thoughts to other people. What I ended up with, however, was teaching 8 different classes of 10-14 year old Italian children. Surprise #1.

I briefly considered turning the project down and trying yet another organization, but I decided that this would be even more challenging. Not only am I teaching English, forcing myself to articulate and explain and describe concepts that come naturally to me yet are totally foreign to my students – I’m also going to be engaging the minds of young children

Now, anyone who’s known me for longer than a few days knows I’m not particularly fond of children. Heck, I wasn’t particularly fond of children when I was a child. During gatherings of large groups I was always the first to suggest playing the quiet game – where everyone must be completely silent for as long as humanly possible. Those brief minutes of silence were complete bliss for me after the ear drum-blowing cacophony that is children at play. Other times I would clean my bedroom, set everything just so, and then turn my little globular boom-box stereo to the classical music station and sit, with my eyes closed, just listening to the music.

Yes, I was a strange child.

All that being said, I never related well to children. When my sister and I played dress-up, it wasn’t as faerie princesses – we ran our own little business and I was a professional career woman.

So, now, as an adult, I find it even more difficult to relate to children. It’s even made me greatly hesitant to have children of my own – but I know that my husband and I would create children far too amazing to keep from this world. It’s simply our duty to bless this world with our progeny (yes, that’s half sarcastic).

Teaching children, then – well…why not? I wanted a challenge, and a challenge this would be. I found myself at the Ungaretti Secondi Media in Civitanova Alta, Italy. For everyone who’s not familiar with Italian schools, that’s the Ungaretti secondary school – or middle school/junior high for us Americans. I teach 8 different classes, three days per week. I work with three different Italian educators who teach English, each with their own, very distinct style of teaching. One is very strict and demanding, but achieves great results. Another is quite gentle and nurturing, but she also achieves great results with her students. The third…well, I haven’t quite figured her out yet. She doesn’t speak English all that well (which isn’t altogether uncommon in Italy, the same as many foreign language teachers in the US might not speak the language fluently), and we’ve had a few misunderstandings on exactly what my role in her classroom is.

She is new to this school this year. At her last school she had English language teachers that came into her classroom, but they were also fluent in Italian and were part of a paid service that the school district had contracted for this purpose. Far different from me,  a volunteer English language tutor who doesn’t speak Italian and is only supposed to assist with already planned lessons. She seems to think, despite several people telling her that this is not the case, that I am just like the language teachers at her old school.

It’s been alternately frustrating and rewarding. Classroom control is very difficult in any country I’m sure, but for a  country that fosters interdependence and group collaboration like Italy, it can be nearly impossible to get the kids to stop talking to their neighbors. Two of the teachers I work with seem to have found strategies that work for them to keep at least a moderate amount of control over their classrooms. The other teacher, however, struggles daily with the students – and it’s not uncommon for it to ultimately end up with her screaming at them at the top of her lungs.

The children are much better with me, perhaps because I made it quite clear when I started teaching in their classrooms that I would brook little misbehavior, or perhaps because they are too busy trying to understand me to talk to their neighbor – I have no idea. But, usually, they are fairly well behaved.

Last Wednesday, however, was quite the tribulation. I essentially ended up teaching two of my classes on my own, from an Italian-produced English textbook that doesn’t always make sense, to classrooms of students that were very nearly out of control. Because I don’t speak Italian and the students’ English is still fairly limited, it can be difficult to make myself understood. When I have a problematic teacher constantly trying to speak over me or routinely conversing with students while I’m trying to conduct my lessons, it makes it particularly difficult.

During my last hour of teaching on Wednesday, one of my higher level classes was in complete chaos for nearly the entire hour. By the end of the lesson I was just about out of my mind with complete frustration. I spent the last few minutes of class essentially yelling at them for their constant misbehavior, incessant chatting, and just general disrespect for each other and for the teachers. The bell rang that signals the end of school while I was still speaking (OK, ranting), and while most classes would have stayed still and quiet until after I quit talking, these kids just grabbed all their stuff, stood up, and walked out of the classroom.

It was totally infuriating.

At that moment I started to seriously question why I had come to Italy, whether or not I could continue working with a teacher who didn’t understand me or my language, who had little idea of my role in the classroom, and whether or not I wanted to continue teaching students who didn’t seem to care if I was there or not.

I was in a bear of a mood all afternoon, until I chatted with my husband. I vented for a little while until I had spent all my anger while he patiently listened (or read, whatever). While I certainly have the option to refuse to work with people here or to refuse to teach certain classes, I just don’t think that’s in the spirit of why I came here. I wanted to challenge myself. I won’t always be able to choose who I do or do not work with, and I don’t think I should start getting picky right now. This program is for a set period of time with a definitive end date. I can handle anything for two months – including unruly classrooms and a teacher I don’t understand (in every sense of the word).

I spent much of my free time in the last week trying to figure out how I could be an asset in the classroom. In what way could I make my presence in this school most valuable? What I decided was that I won’t teach from the book. Anyone can teach from a textbook – whether they speak the language fluently or not. What I can do – that no one else can – is to teach the finer points of Standard American English that you couldn’t possibly learn from a textbook: idioms, slang, colloquialisms, etc. I decided we would watch short videos in English and I would challenge them with comprehension questions.

And I would make it fun. I don’t like being angry. I don’t want to be angry with my students. I genuinely like them and I want them to like me. Even more, I want them to like learning English. If we keep trying to bludgeon it into their stubborn little heads every week, they’re likely not going to learn much and they’re definitely not going to like the process. The best way to encourage learning, in my opinion, is to make it fun. So I would. 

I found little videos like The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, and movie trailers for kids movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and a BBC advert in which they showed brief scenes of their Planet Earth documentary and David Attenborough read the lyrics to the song Wonderful World, and developed comprehension questions. For the older kids I had a presentation on American idioms and slang.

I arrived at school this morning with great hopes of making a difference in the classroom – and then I discovered that the teacher for my first two classes (my problem classes) was out sick. And I was with them all by myself. For the entire lesson. Two hours with the first class of younger kids, and one hour with the class of older kids. I had a nanosecond of panic, and then decided everything would be just fine. Positive visualization, right?

And I was right. The kids were angels. Seriously. At the beginning of class I explained that I was with them alone for the entire lesson. I reminded them that my Italian is very limited, so they must be nice and help me out by listening very carefully. Anytime either class got too loud or excited, I just stopped what I was doing, clasped my hands behind my back, and waited. Before too long they were shushing each other to be quiet. At first I would stand still for nearly 15-20 seconds before they got the hint. By the end of class it took less than 5 seconds for them to quiet themselves. Talk about classroom control success.

In my first class we spent the first hour reviewing the homework I had assigned them last week. Nearly every single child had a correct answer. Then we watched videos and did the comprehension questions. They were all very good and paid close attention. Almost all the answers were perfectly right the first time.

For my second class of older kids I skipped homework review entirely, because I hadn’t assigned it. I got them to quiet down after the beginning of class and explained I would be with them alone today – no other teacher. I reminded them that my Italian was poor and told them I needed their help. I then took two or three minutes to talk about what had happened the week before – that Italian students are very different from American students, that teaching methods are different (my diplomatic explanation), and that I had been very frustrated. They agreed. I explained that I would no longer be teaching them from the book. Instead, I would teach them things about English and the United States that they couldn’t learn from anyone else – and they all looked very pleased about this.

So , we went right to a Powerpoint presentation on idioms common in Standard American English. The students were perfect. They were quiet and respectful and totally engaged in the lesson. I had them tell me the Italian words for things, whether I knew the word or not, compelling them to use their translation skills. Letting them showcase a language they are already comfortable with, and watching my miserable attempts at speaking Italian, rather than continual corrections of their English, seemed to really resonate with them – and why wouldn’t it? No one wants to be corrected all the time, it’s demeaning and frustrating. Letting them teach me new things lets them feel in control – far more effective, in my opinion.

About ten minutes into the lesson, the assistant headmaster came into the classroom and sat down to observe (I think she was nervous about me being in there alone). I can’t tell you how satisfying it was to have her walk into my classroom – one of the most notoriously obnoxious classes in the entire school – and have all of the students completely calm and engaged in the task.

Within a few slides of different idioms she was participating in the lesson as well. The kids were translating the English slides into Italian for the assistant headmaster, and they were giving the Italian versions of some of the expressions. It was great. I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better experience in the classroom. Even more satisfying is knowing that the assistant headmaster, who essentially runs the school, was totally happy with my lessons and my control of the classroom. Yay!

I don’t think I will ever become a full-time educator, but I know now how incredibly satisfying and rewarding teaching can be – both for myself and in teaching my students something new and seeing the excitement on their faces. This is precisely the reason I enrolled in this program. I wanted a challenge; to present myself with obstacles and overcome them.

And this time, I most definitely did.