Games, theatre, meeting. ANDIt was a full-blown end-of-year party that was celebrated yesterday at Rocca Brancaleone. They were there to say goodbye before the holidays the children and teachers of Casa Italia-Cina, the after-school program led by the Montetauro community which has been taking place in the Seminary for three years.
To welcome them, with the manager of the Ravenna project, FMrs Stefano Santoroalso the councilor for families, Livia Molducci And father Vincenzo Tomaiuoli, director of the pastoral care of migrants in the diocese. “I’m happy that you invited me – said the councilor Molducci – because this project works and we want to continue promoting it”. “The richness of every culture is the languages – added father Tomaiuoli addressing the kids -. You know two languages: you are richer than us. We want to enhance our mutual knowledge of languages by being together. The other great way to do it is to be together. This is how peace can be built.” In the evening too the archbishop of Ravenna-Cervia brought his greetings to Casa Italia-China participating, as a spectator, in the theatrical show “Cineid”the result of a workshop that started in winter and also involved Italian kids.
A thirty young people were involved in the project who also this year studied, did homework and played in the classrooms in Piazza Duomo. Next to them 11 volunteer teachers and fifteen animators.
Among the teachers there is also Rita Cricca, a pillar of the Dante Alighieri Classical High School. He taught Italian, Greek and Latin to generations of Ravenna residents. Today, who is retired, he follows five Chinese elementary school children at Casa Italia-China. “I encountered this reality thanks to Brother Paolo Marasco (who founded it, ed.). I knew him as Christian in high school: he was one of my students – says the teacher –. When we met again, thanks to another former student who now lives in Munich, she told me about this adventure and offered me to lend a hand. At the beginning I had some hesitations: they were small children, while I mainly taught high school. Plus I was in my last year before retirement. I thought about it a bit.”
Less than a year, in reality, because in September 2022 Prof Cricca was already part of the teaching staff of Casa Italia-China. “Teaching Italian to foreigners has always attracted me – she explains – ever since I had the opportunity to give lessons to a novice of the Capuchin nuns from the Belgian Congo. I think it’s a way to see the language from another point of view. But you also realize how difficult Italian is.”
The difficulty lies in learning words, rather than grammatical structures: “Someone asks me for the ‘points’, someone else gives them themselves – says the teacher –. I try to make it clear that there are no votes here.” Since it was born, Casa Italia-Cina has acted as a support to the school, meeting and relating to the teachers of the children who in most cases cannot count on cultural mediators in the classroom. The approach is also different to the after-school program which is held three times a week in the Seminary: “At school I asked for maximum rigor – recalls Cricca –. Here I think it’s important for kids to talk, to try. experiment with the language. We try to support the school and provide some tools.”
What doesn’t change is the educational relationship: “In education we get involved, on both sides. In a less structured context like this it is even more beautiful: it goes to the heart. You feel like you dedicate your time to others. And, as a result, you earn it, in relationships with the kids and with the other people who are part of this community.” For foreigners, Italian is much more than a tool, concludes the teacher: “Language is the key to understanding culture”. And the gratuitousness that teachers give us, the key to reaching their hearts.
