The Spanish language festival at the Maria Ausiliatrice Institute in Catania

by Laura Calcaterra

This year, the attention to languages, openness and dialogue with other educational realities involve the students of the Maria Ausiliatrice Institute (IMA) in Catania preparing a show in Spanish, The seagull and the cat, by Luis Sepúlveda. This is a rich experience which sees some classes of nursery, primary and secondary school children performing at the Spanish language theater festival in the presence of the other schools with which a beautiful network has been created.

The Spanish language theater festival was born in the 2013/14 school year thanks to an idea of ​​professors Laura Calcaterra and Giovanna Manola working that year at the De Felice Giuffrida in Catania, who networked various secondary schools of second degree of Catania and province. The school director at the time, Prof., supported the idea. Francesco Ficicchia.

The dark years of the pandemic did not allow the Festival to finally take place on April 12, 2024 he’s back on the scene. The leading school of the network is now the IPSSEOA G. Falcone Institute of Giarre, whose Scientific Director is Professor Monica Insanguine who, strongly believing in the values ​​of theater and in the importance of the diffusion of foreign languages, complied with the request of the undersigned, now a teacher at Falcone.

This year’s Festival, however, took place at the Maria Ausiliatrice Institute in Catania, where the Director Sister Gina Sanfilippo welcomed the event precisely because it espouses values ​​shared with the Salesian school. Creativity expressed through theater puts children in a position to express and share their talents! We actually lived the experience that in every boy/girl there is a point accessible to good – as Don Bosco says.

The network created has allowed us to build a community of schools that collaborate to educate students to create a better, more inclusive, respectful of otherness, proactive and aware world.

Six institutes performed on stage: IMA from Catania, Falcone from Giarre, De Felice Olivetti from Catania, De Sanctis from Paternò, Pantano-Riposto from Riposto and Padre Santo Di Guardo-Quasimodo from Catania.

The world changes with education and above all by creating contexts, educational environments, positive relationships between teachers and students. Education comes through example and theater is a wonderful example of the options we can have in life and the choices we can make! I thank all those who participated in any way in the Spanish language theater festival, from the school directors, to the teachers, to the students, to the technicians, to the parents, to the public and I sincerely hope to be able to see even more students perform on this stage.