On Italian language courses for foreigners

“Who gives the hours to others
lives forever.”
(Alda Merini)

Casetta Rossa. October 2022

In June it will be a year that I teach Italian to foreigners.

Time has flown by. It all started by chance and now I teach morning and afternoon in two different places in Rome, always to people from Bangladesh.

Many friends have asked me about this experience, and there is curiosity even in those who live in distant countries of Asia, because – they tell me – this activity does not exist, for example, in Malaysia, which is a nation with a high rate of d immigration, especially work, and my school is viewed with a lot of envy.

So I think it's worth writing two words about it.

 

It all started at the Italian school in Casetta Rossa, in Garbatellla.

A fortuitous coincidence would have it that, at my presentation on Bangladesh in a Library, there were teachers of this school in the audience, including dear Maria Vittoria, who is the face and heart behind this school. In a second event, again with my photographs narrated from my trip to Bangladesh, I met other teachers of the same school and, in the end, while talking, they asked me to come and see them, perhaps even to do some photographic projects together.

It was the end of June when I entered for the first time among the wooden tables of the restaurant where the “unstructured” lessons of groups of teachers and students of different nationalities and ages are held. Most are from Bangladesh.

I sat next to a young Bangladeshi mother while she was having a class, tried to help her, and have been going every week since. At first, it was only two days a week, also because it's not really close to my house – 40 minutes by subway.

But my class was formed, all young Bangladeshi mothers who came (and still come) to school with their little children in strollers, and they asked me to come every day because two weren't enough and they wanted to have lessons only with me. So from two days, I have reached four and I must say that, despite some dropouts, the core of my class has always remained the same. We called ourselves “Amar Shundor Class”, which in Bangla means “My Beautiful Class”.

 

Casetta Rossa. 2022\2023

Not satisfied with this commitment that occupies many of my mornings, I also started teaching near my home, two afternoons a week, always in a first-level class of Bangladeshi. Here too there is a young mother with her very young children.

The same for them: a single day was not enough and, after much insistence, I gave in to coming twice a week.

Mental fatigue is double, but satisfaction is also double.

 

Casal De'Pazzi. March 2023

Beyond the friendships that arise between teachers, I believe that the greatest joy is in the bond between teacher and student.

I certainly don't lack Bangladeshi friendships, since I've been living with them for 14 years now for my job; but these friendships taste different. Especially because I know how important learning the Italian language is for them.

It is no coincidence that when I am asked during lessons or interventions in libraries or schools, what has been the factor of greatest change in the Bangladeshi community throughout this decade, I always mention the Italian language schools.

In my opinion, there is no other phenomenon, if not perhaps the explosion of social media and smartphones, which has radically changed the mentality of this community as much as Italian courses. It was really an ontological transformation. From inside.

I quote the words of my dear friend Sara Rossetti, with whom I have shared the love for Bangladeshi culture, teaching, and books for many years, who in “Kotha. Bangladeshi women in changing Rome” (EDIESSE), the book written with Katiuscia Carnà in 2018, wrote about teaching the Italian language to Bangladeshi women:

“Satisfying those who study does not mean indulging them and giving rise to accusations of exaggerated welfarism, but it means allowing them to follow an effective course. Having a space for the children and therefore allowing mothers to take part in the lessons, choosing times that respect the commitments of the participants... […] Do not ghettoise, do not assist a priori, but protect, accompany and include.” (p. 164)

 

Casetta Rossa. October 20, 2022

Teaching them the Italian language means equipping them with an invisible and powerful weapon: Independence. Self-confidence. The culture.

I, who have personally experienced meeting other cultures and distant countries, have always believed that the study of their language was the main gateway to understanding. And many of the facets of the different cultures I understood from the terminologies of the mother tongue.

If, as was said in the feminist theories of the nineties, the control of society passes through the control of the body, first of all, that of the woman, I am firmly convinced that the control that takes place within the migrant communities themselves occurs through the control of the language. If I don't allow you to learn the language of the host country then you will never be able to move freely, you will always be tied to me, totally dependent.

And so it was when I started working with the Bangladeshi community in 2009. Back then, there weren't so many free Italian courses, and the families who live here were made up of men who spoke broken Italian, mostly learned at work, and women who even for many years could not pronounce a single word.

Relegated to the house or to a limited circle of Bangladeshi friends only.

It was really difficult. Especially communication.

In Torpignattara, great work was done by the ASINITAS ONLUS Association of the Pisacane School.

Then the free courses increased, in the Libraries of Rome, in associative circles, in schools, in churches, with the important work carried out by the Migrant Schools Network in Rome.

And their quality of life has improved significantly.

Even the men, the husbands, have begun to understand that a wife who knows Italian is not a threat to their marriage but is also a guarantee of self-sufficiency from the doctor, the pediatrician, the gynecologist, at school, in conversations with the teachers.

It is also a form of resistance to racism, to intolerance, because you cannot ask people to change their religion or their clothes, but it is necessary to communicate in the same language.

Integration passes mainly through the use of language.

I said before that the relationships that are created in class are more than just friendships.

I quote again the words of Sara Rossetti in the same book which express this feeling well:

“As for the teachers, also for the female students, what one breathes in the Italian classes remains imprinted for a long time, enters a very long-lasting personal baggage. School, for those who manage to attend it, remains a memory and an intense moment of exchange with classmates and teachers who, in the epic of each one's personal migratory story, often assume a leading role, an element between the romantic and the concrete, which is almost never missing in the narratives.” (“Kotha”, p. 165)

In fact, often these small classes are like micro families, with teachers who are often retired, former school teachers, trainees, in any case, all and all volunteers who do it out of passion, to pass the time, or as a moral duty towards those who come to live in our cities. And what you get in return is sometimes more than just a pupil-teacher relationship.

As one of my teacher friends told me a few days ago, her Bangladeshi students often bring her gifts, from clothes to lunch cooked for her. Even my female students give me chocolate and cook sweets for me. Those who leave for their own country come back with small souvenirs, and if one of them celebrates a birthday, it happens that we all celebrate it together at school.

So what you see in their eyes is not just respect, and friendship, but gratitude. This is the main emotional drive that leads me to come every day, not to get too angry if they don't understand, and to be patient if they don't come to class without warning.

Because they know how important it is to learn, to study. And they do it even when it rains, the cold winter, during the Ramadan fast.

 

Casetta Rossa. October 2022

Each of these classes, whether small or large, structured or unstructured, voluntary or paid, is an outpost of self-esteem and independence of each of the students. There should be some in every corner of our cities and held in greater esteem by government institutions because when the demand for membership is so high it means that their need for integration is much stronger than one generally thinks.

 

Last thing. Not unimportant.

It's not just the students who learn.

It's always a circle. We give and we receive.

As I have already written in another article, teaching means leaving a mark, and it's always a reciprocal sign.

 

Casetta Rossa. October, 2022

Italian version