During this entire program in Rome, Italy, I had an amazing opportunity to work with Italian teachers and children from diverse backgrounds and ethnicity at the public school called Iqbal Masih every twice a week - Tuesday early in the morning and Thursday afternoon. Iqbal Masih School is located internationally and its name after a young Pakistan boy who was forced into bonded labor in carpet factory at the age of four the equivalent of 12 USD and when he was 10, he escaped from his boss and started to fight against a child slavery and speak out for freedom and schools for children from all around the world. But two years later, he was murdered by Carpet Mafia on his way back from Church on Easter Sunday. In response, there are many schools followed by his name have established all over the world in order to help fight for Iqbal’s Dream. The school which I have been working with was located in the first Southern outskirts, in the neighborhood called Villa de Santis where is an hour bus ride from the UW Rome Center. This school is composed by three buildings and consisted of total 37 classes with 650 children of infants and primary students under one principal. In addition, around 10% of pupils are immigrant children and Roma children. The philosophy and mission of this school is encouraging children to feel themselves as world citizens and teaching them to promote positive relationships and accepting different cultures; in other word, intercultural education. Recently Iqbal Masih School and few other schools across the border create a project to have better communication between schools and exchange education information. This project formulates diverse activities to involve students from each school and let children to actively participate in the project such as competition of drawing a banner of each school or writing a good story to win a prize. Again, about two weeks ago, each school teacher’s meeting was held in Milan in purpose of exchanging education resources and sharing an experience from each school. Also Iqbal Masih School invited a teacher from partner school in Pakistan and telling children a story of Iqbal Masih and teaching them how to write Iqbal Masih and their name in Pakistan. In addition, the school invited an expert from child labor to talk and discuss about child slavery issue. Other than these, there are more activities that the school has planned for their children. Moreover, Iqbal Masih School has a higher parent’s participation and they created an organization to have better communication with teachers and parents.
For the past eight weeks while I was doing my service learning at Iqbal Masih School, I worked with 5th grader on Tuesday from 9:30 am to 12:00 pm and 1st grader on Thursday from 1:30 pm to 4:00 pm. The fifth grade classroom is located in Via Balzani and the first grade classroom is located in Via Ferraironi which is the main building of Iqbal Masih School. On the very first day of school visit, I was very excited to work with Italian teachers and children in Italian public school and I went to school with a full of butterflies. When I first saw the school building from the outside, the image of school was overlapped with my primary school in Boondang, Korea because the atmosphere and the physical appearance of both schools are similar. When the school image was overlapped with my primary school back home in Korea, I started to recall my own memories of classrooms, desks, chairs, teachers, and friends of elementary school as much as I could. In the beginning of my service learning, there were few interesting things about Iqbal Masih School. First, it was really interested to me that there are two class teachers in one classroom - morning teacher and afternoon teacher and each class teacher is specialized in certain subjects but not all. In addition, children have a separate instructor for Religion class. Second, they do not have a fixed time table for classes. Once I asked about class schedule to class teachers whom I worked with, they said their time table are set and showed me their time table. It seems that they have a set time table but to me, it is more like flexible because the time table is divided by the name of the teachers instead of subjects which means children might have different order of classes everyday and it is very dependent on class teacher what she or he wants to teach first and I had an experience that teacher was teaching different subject to children when I was in a classroom every week on the same day and same time. Next, unlike Korean and American school system, in Italy, when teacher and children are assigned in one class, they stay with each other until children graduate or move onto higher education. I think this system is better than changing classmates and class teacher every year because it helps both teacher and student to have better understanding or communication of each other; moreover, teacher can provide improved supports for each child since they have known children for awhile but at the same time, there was a question came to my mind that ‘isn’t that the school unconsciously limiting children to make a new friend? Isn’t that preventing children to learn how to adapt new things and people from outside?’
Before I began my service learning, I presumed that there will be a gap or discrimination between immigrant children or second generation and Italian children that they will not get along in terms of socialization because I had a preconceived notion which came from my class readings, guest speaker’s lectures and class notes that Italian considers an immigrant as “Others” and tends to exclude them from their society. Again, I heard that Italy is a country for old people and not for younger generation so Italy does not really interested in education for young people in Italy and that leads a lot of drop outs rates from the schools; therefore, I thought children in Italy are studying under inadequate education system or not receiving a proper education but every week when I visited the school, teachers and children at Iqbal Masih changed my negative perspectives on Italian education to positive way - Teachers have been working so hard and want to provide better quality of education to children and help them to experience as much as they can during their childhood, and also teachers are working so hard on creating an opportunity for children to have international experience by teaching English at school, sharing experiences, languages and main tour sights of other countries between immigrant children who are from different parts of the world and Italian students. Furthermore, the school invites guest speakers from outside the country. In my opinion, children at Iqbal Masih School have a strong and good relationships with each other no matter children have different skin color and cultures but I have noticed that there is a little gap between Roma and rest of the children. It seems that they are getting along well and no problem at all but yet there is a wall and I think it might because of less interaction between Italian & other immigrant children and Roma children. When there is an activity which has to do with groups of two or more, unconsciously children are excluding or including Roma children to their group at the very last. However, interaction between teacher and Roma children are positive. In addition, teachers put an effort to make sure Roma children are following and understanding all the instructions. While I am in Rome, I learned and still learning about their history, cultures and living environment and have a chance to interact with Roma children at school setting. From my experience, the one thing about Roma children interested me was when I found that they do not come to school on regular base, heard about their bad living situation from class teachers, and saw that they are barely reading and writing their name. These strikes make me to learn more about them and understand them thus my final research paper is focused on integration of Roma children in Italian Education System and my arguments are ‘Why they have poorer academic performance than Italian student?’ and ‘How important education is to them now and future?’
During my entire experience and observation at Iqbal Masih School, I have seen a few things that I thought it would be better if all the other schools follow a system in Iqbal Masih and/or I want to follow if I become a teacher in the near future - first, children and teacher stay together for the entire primary years because every year, teacher, children, and parents do not have to deal with spending time to introduce each other, telling a same story about children or family again and again every beginning of the school year. Moreover, in that way, teacher and student, even parents can build a strong bond which I really appreciate. Next, it is great that children have all their notebooks from first grade with them through the last year of primary school and when I saw one of my fifth graders notebook, I can see all her works from first grade and there is her pictures of each year so I can see her growth process which I think is very cool and more about written memories of childhood. In addition, as I am student who is learning education and want to become a teacher in the near future, experience at Iqbal Masih was really grateful resources (teaching skills and techniques) for myself and gave me better ideas on what my future should be and will be as a teacher who working with children from different backgrounds. Again, while I am in school, I talked and interviewed my class teachers from first grader and fifth grader to get a better understanding of the school system in Italy and children in my classroom. In addition, I had an opportunity to sit down with Roma student (5th grader), who just came to school last year and does not know how to read and write, in the classroom and help him to learn, write, and read words for half an hour. It was really very challenging for me to teach him a word because he could not read without my help even though we have practiced to pronounce the word ‘Papa’ for several times. Again, after few minutes, he just got frustrated and started to cry and all he wanted to do is just coloring pictures. I remembered that his class teacher said that usually Roma children are grow up with no structures and live very freely like a wolf so once they come to school and sit down and do class work, they got really stress. By gathering all the information of Roma from class teachers, lectures from my classes, readings, and experience, I want to continue to learn more about Roma children in terms of education.
Our service learning ended last tuesday (March 1, 2011) and it was really hard to say good-bye to children, teacher, and the school... because the children at Iqbal Masih School are my first children that I ihave nteracted with in school and actually I taught them for an hour for one time and they are very adorable and lovely students ever so far! Special thanks to Iqbal Masih School teacher and children to give me unforgettable memories and unique experiences while I am in Rome, Italy ♥
ciao,
ciao,
