The following article appeared in the October 13, 2008 Inquirer. This school should be commended for their program!
By Rita Giordano-
Inquirer Staff Writer
In Caterina Dawson’s Italian-language class at Glassboro High School, they don’t study the verb to whack.
There are no goodfellas, wiseguys, godfathers or dons. Conspicuously absent, too, is Tony Soprano, New Jersey’s most infamous fictional native son.
Instead, Dawson’s students talk about Italian art and architecture. They sing Italian songs. In their curriculum, they’re learning how to make pasta and do the tarantella, an Italian folk dance. The students say they’re having a blast.
“If you throw yourself into a culture, you learn so much more than watching a movie,” said Ezekiel Olumakin, a 16-year-old junior. “If you watch a movie, you hear: ‘Yo, whack that dude.’ When you look at real life, there’s so much more.”
Those words would be music to the ears of the people behind this, an Italian-heritage curriculum working its way around the state and, recently, starting to be distributed around the country.
Launched last year, the curriculum is the work of the New Jersey Italian and Italian American Heritage Commission, which was established by 2002 state legislation to promote understanding and awareness of Italian history, culture and contributions.
The legislation got support from Italian Americans who said basta – enough – to what they felt were the largely negative and often mob-related images of them in popular culture.
“The Sopranos was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Angelo Morresi, a North Jersey lawyer who drafted the legislation and found support for it especially among state leaders of Italian American descent.
The commission worked with the state Department of Education in forming the K-12 curriculum, which is available free of charge to any school or district. It is not mandatory, and its content is meant to be incorporated into existing curriculum.
“It can be infused in your world history course or any course,” said John Dougherty, state coordinator of social studies who worked on the curriculum.
People of Italian ancestry make up a sizable chunk of the Garden State – nearly a fifth of the population, according to U.S. census data.
But Dougherty said the curriculum has broad relevance.
“You don’t limit the teaching of the Renaissance to areas with a large number of Italian Americans,” he said.
The commission members hope the curriculum gets picked up far and wide.
“We want everyone to use it,” said Gilda Rorro Baldassari, head of the commission’s curriculum committee. “We just want to get the word out.”
(Baldassari, for the record, did catch a few episodes of The Sopranos when it went to reruns on A&E. She found the acting good, but the violence was not for her.)
Of the state’s 616 school districts, 111 use the curriculum, she said. Training sessions have been held in central and North Jersey. Last month the first was held in South Jersey.
It may get even broader play. In the last few months, about 500 copies of the curriculum have been distributed to teachers around the country by the National Italian American Foundation, said Serena Cantoni, education programs director, who added that she knew of no similar lessons plan.
She noted something about New Jersey’s curriculum that may surprise: “It’s not ethnocentric.”
At the recent training session at Camden County Community College, some educators said they found the curriculum strong on Italian contributions and much more.
“It shows interdependence has been happening for centuries,” said John Gamble Jr., director of instruction in the Westampton School District.
Kevin Brady, president of the American Institute of History Education and author of the curriculum, talked about lessons that cross disciplines and encourage inquiry.
One assignment he discussed was challenging students to investigate who really invented the telephone. Was it Alexander Graham Bell, or was it Elisha Gray of the United States or Antonio Meucci of Italy?
Ruth Pelfrey, a Washington Township music teacher, told how she used the curriculum to infuse her classes on Antonio Vivaldi with information about the composer’s life and times. They drew to his music.
“It was really exciting because the kids were listening to classical music and actually enjoying it,” Pelfrey said. “I got a couple letters from parents asking, ‘What did you do in class?’ The kids wanted to buy classical CDs.”
The curriculum covers a lot of ground. Kindergartners and first graders receive character education through the story of Pinocchio – the original one and the Disney version.
Fourth and fifth graders can learn about explorers like Cristoforo Colombo and today’s holiday that has become a celebration of Italian American pride. Older students may examine anti-immigrant movements.
In Glassboro, Dawson, whose family moved from Italy when she was teenager, chatted gaily with her students in Italian last week as they created mosaics inspired by those at a church she visited in Ravenna.
She’s also teaching them about the value Italians put on family. In her classroom, each table takes a family name.
At student Olumakin’s table the name is De Rossi, after Italian soccer player Daniele De Rossi. Olumakin, whose family came from Nigeria when he was 2, said he wanted to learn Italian because he’d like to play soccer in Italy.
Now, he said, he is also getting a better understanding of the people.
“There’s more,” he said, “than meets the eye.”
Contact staff writer Rita Giordano at 856-779-3841 or rgiordano@phillynews.com.
For more on the New Jersey Italian and Italian American Heritage Commission, contact the commission at 732-932-0670 or at http://www.njitalia.nj.gov.