Culture

Italy's culture is very, very laid back. Italian's motto is definitely "Live life to the fullest!" Even on the first day in Florence, when I was walking around exploring the city, my friends and I came across an outdoor dance. When we went, to our surprise the average age there was in the 50s-60s. And this culture is definitely shown in their schools. When I walk into my 11-13 year old student's classrooms, they all always laughing and chattering away, ignoring what the teacher is saying. The teacher would tell them to "Shut up" and nothing would change. When I teach it is very frustrating because once the students have any chance of talking to their peers they will, even if they are all the way across the room. They will scream. I had to implement the counting down rule to this class, which i usually use for younger students, where I count down from three and once I get to one, everyone should be silent. The first few times it worked perfectly but later on they continued talking. I could tell the teacher was very frustrated. I feel like the students have a lack of respect for the teachers, the teachers say one thing and they do the opposite. But sometimes I think it is because of the teacher's lack of discipline that the students act this way.

Also I feel that Italians love creativity. During one of my Halloween lessons, I wrote them a poem on the board and told them to copy it. The teacher told them to be "creative" with their writing. I was confused at first but soon realized that she wanted them to write in different fonts, such as 'scary letters' as one of my students told me and also in different colors, so every letter would be a different color. I was shocked. What should of taken 5 minutes maximum took 20 minutes to write because of their creative writing. It is definitely not a bad thing but instead of using the extra time to read and learn English, they were practicing their calligraphy.