The Teaching Italian Symposium, now in its 14th year, has been the annual professional development program for Italian scholars and teachers from around the globe to connect professionally and share ideas.
TIXIV: Do You Speak Global? Intercultural Communicative Citizenship in the Italian Classroom is where you need to be on Friday, October 22, from 3-6 p.m.*, as we meet to engage with experts to develop materials that focus on the importance of obtaining intercultural competencies through enriching cultural immersions within the Italian classroom. Montclair State’s signature event—with its stellar presenters and networking opportunities for Italianists—offers an immersive learning experience designed to deliver strategies and problem-solving skills you can put to use immediately to help you incorporate perspective-taking, cultural self-awareness, and intercultural communication in an inclusive learning environment.
The organizing committee has decided to reconceptualize the symposium due to post-pandemic restrictions: Teaching Italian will take place virtually while providing the same stimulating experience. And again this year, the Joseph and Elda Coccia Institute will be offering the Teaching Italian Symposium free of charge to all participants.
*Please note: The abbreviated edition of the symposium will provide four (4) professional development credits.
Workshops
April Weintritt & Janice Aski
Incorporating Intercultural Learning Activities into Italian Language and Culture Classrooms
In this workshop, participants will learn about successful models for integrating intercultural learning activities and reflections across courses in the Italian curriculum. April Weintritt and Janice Aski begin by discussing why intercultural competence needs to be incorporated into the language classroom and how language classrooms are a perfect fit for developing intercultural competence. We will present participants with multiple effective classroom activities leading to group discussions and at-home reflections. Then, we focus our attention on matching different mindset and skillset components of intercultural competence with activity types. This focus includes a discussion of strategies that ensure we are aligning activities with our chosen intercultural learning goals and making full use of the full-immersion language learning environment to target additional skills, qualities, and attitudes of intercultural competence. Finally, a significant portion of the workshop will be dedicated to participants’ opportunities to brainstorm and create activities specific to their classroom goals and assessment types, supported by the workshop leaders.
Francesca Silvano
An exchange, an embrace
This workshop is dedicated to all Italian teachers willing to create a bond with a school in the motherland. You will be guided step by step through the whole process: ways to find a well matched school, practical tips for a successful exchange, co-instructional strategies (synchronous vs. asynchronous lessons), relevant topics of discussion, and more. Tech tools well aligned with the exchange intent will be illustrated and used for practice. Also, the role of mindfulness in obtaining true intercultural competence will be discussed.
Language exchange programs tend to benefit oral proficiency, fluency, colloquial language acquisition and – most importantly – INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCY. In fact, the greatest benefit of these types of programs is the exposure to the native speaker’s culture, in a peer-friendly atmosphere, with little or no pressure to get everything right as both sides are trying to improve their language skills and cultural understanding. Students in such programs have demonstrated to be highly motivated and super engaged in a learning environment that can be fun and productive at the same time.
Biography
April Weintritt
April D. Weintritt is Assistant Professor of Teaching in Italian and Assistant Director of the Italian Language Program at The Ohio State University. She specializes in world language pedagogy and intercultural learning as well as content-based instruction across the Italian curriculum. Recently, April has co-authored with Janice Aski an article on the need for intercultural learning in language classrooms and hosted a webinar series with Aski and Purdue University colleagues on intercultural learning in language courses. She is currently pursuing a COIL collaboration that emphasizes intercultural learning for both parties and is focused on research that aligns intercultural, full-immersion language learning with principles of inclusive teaching and transformative learning theory.
Janice Aski
Janice M. Aski is Director of the Italian Language Program and Interim Director of the Center of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at The Ohio State University. She has a dual specialization in Historical Italian/Romance Linguistics and World Language Pedagogy. She has published scholarly articles in both areas and is co-author, with Cinzia Russi, of Iconicity and analogy in language change (2016, De Gruyter Mouton) and of the first-year Italian text, Avanti! with Diane Musumeci (5th edition 2021, McGraw Hill). Her most recent research focuses on the incorporation of intercultural competence training in elementary-level language courses and she has co-produced, with April Weintritt and colleagues from Purdue University, a webinar series dedicated to this topic: https://frit.osu.edu/initiatives/intercultural-competence
Francesca Silvano
Francesca Silvano is a native of Rome, Italy, where she attended the Liceo Linguistico Sperimentale before enrolling in the University of Rome, La Sapienza. She completed her Bachelor’s in Romance Languages and Comparative Literature at CUNY, Hunter College, and also obtained an MAT in Pedagogy and Instructional Technology. Ms. Silvano is currently teaching Italian at Pascack Valley HS in NJ, as well as working as a translator of historical fiction novels. Being quadrilingual and an avid traveler, Francesca is a firm believer of intercultural competence, hence her starting a virtual exchange – soon to be a full exchange program – with the Liceo Linguistico Rossi in Massa, in Northern Tuscany. Ms. Silvano is also a certified mindfulness educator and an advocate of mindfulness in language acquisition, as a way to eliminate all barriers and pave the way to a true embrace of new cultures.