Sunday,
February 18, 2007
Italian Language Classes Surge in
The
ANNOTICO Report
Gloucester
County (in South New Jersey) has realized a large surge in enrollment
for Italian Language classes, principally because they are NOW being offered,
solely because the State
mandated that Local Communities have a say in which Languages be offered in
schools.
With
a substantial number of residents of Italian heritage, and effective
grass-roots community efforts, plus grant funding many of the fledgling
Italian education programs became possible.
In
addition to the urge to connect with their Heritage, Italian language is also
popular because of the panache of Italian fashion, and
A
Happy problem the success has created is a shortage and demand for Italian
Language Teachers.
Jew
Jersey .com
By
Matthew Ralph
Sunday,
February 18, 2007
Seldom spoken in
the classrooms of
"Ten years
ago only Glassboro was teaching Italian," said Joseph Cannavo,
area representative for the Italian-American Committee on Education. "Now
all of a sudden we are seeing more and more districts offering it."
In addition to
Glassboro, Gloucester County Institute of Technology, Paulsboro,
Cannavo, an instructor at
Swedesboro-Woolwich, said the movement toward more Italian education programs
has grown over the past decade out of the state Department of Education's 1996
core curriculum standards. Included in the standards was a provision that the
community could have a say in what world languages are taught locally.
"When word
began to leak out in these heavy Italian-American communities like
Swedesboro-Woolwich and Gibbstown that they had a say, it just started to
snowball from that point," Cannavo said.
Grass-roots
community efforts and grant funding available to districts have helped make
many of the fledgling Italian education program
possible, Cannavo said. To date, he said
Swedesboro-Woolwich, has received about $44,000 in grant money from the Italian
Consulate.
Census Bureau,
there are 62,095 Italian-Americans living in the county, about 24.4 percent of
the county's population.
It's not just
those with Italian ancestry driving the upswing. Cannavo
said students in the performing arts academy at GCIT were behind the effort at
the school eight years ago.
"There's a couple reasons why overall it's becoming
popular," Cannavo said. "It seems to be
sort of fashionable if you look at the fashion designers and the fancy race
cars. As a tourist site it's becoming more vogue to go
there. Believe it or not, even
Gina Mateka, director of secondary education at GCIT, said
Italian continues to be a popular world language option. The school also offers
Spanish and Latin.
"It is
growing," Mateka said, noting that roughly 130
students are enrolled in classes. "The interest level is definitely
there."
Earlier this
month, GCIT was host to an Italian education conference where Cannavo and representatives of area Sons of Italy chapters
gathered with area educators.
Among the topics
of discussion was the challenge many districts face in finding certified
Italian teachers.
"One of the
fears of a lot of the districts and it's a legitimate one is the lack of
teachers," Cannavo said. "Certified Italian
teachers are at a premium. When an Italian teacher leaves a school district,
the district usually goes into a tailspin."
Between July 2004
and June 2005,
The shortage of
available certified teachers was cited by school officials in
About 40 students
are enrolled in after-school Italian courses for college credit through
"Any
decision to adopt any additional world languages in the high school curriculum
will be reviewed when the adoption cycle comes due," said Jan Giel, spokeswoman for the district.
As teaching of
the language continues to grow in the county, a future generation with and
without ancestry traced back to
Trevor Elm, 11, a
fifth-grader at
"It's a
different language and I can speak it and no one else at my house will know
what I'm talking about," said Elm, who rushed to the teacher's desk to
collect his prize for winning, a key chain with the outline of the country over
a red, white and green background.
http://www.nj.com/news/gloucester/
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