On Monday, it was out first say watching teacher candidates work inside an Italian school. The night before, Yasmine, Elizabeth and I conferenced how to help assist and assess in her bilingual Basketball book that she wrote.

As Yasmine instructed the class, I helped students by guiding them where to read. After she was done with the book, we helped assist her basketball game. The kids loved it; I loved it. It was fun! 

For the basketball game, we implemented vocabulary words. There were three different levels: 1 point was to say the vocabulary word in english, 2 points was to draw a picture of the vocabulary word, and 3 points was to say a sentence from the book in English.

So after a hectic day of traveling to Torremaggorie, I finally got to visit their school and the town. I honestly feel like I am in love. The students were adorable and the town was beautiful. I loved how everything was such a tight community. Everyone there knew everyone, and we would get stared at because we're Americans. I would hear the kids telling their parents that there were Americani! I thought that that was the cutest thing ever.

I got toured around the school from all grades up to fifth grade. I would see so many spirited kids that were excited to see us and I would see so many kids who were shy but had a lot of questions for us. I am so excited to work with the kids here even if I don't am not fluent with Italian. I just hope my Spanish makes up for it since they're kind of similar.

Walking around town was an interesting experience. Seeing how during the afternoons shops would be closed and open back up in the events. I was surprised about how students would be dismissed at 1:30pm but have school on a Saturday. I feel like if I had the choice, I wouldn't mind 6 days a week with lesser hours. I rather be home for lunch than eat cafeteria food.

I noticed so many things that were going on around the school that I felt I could use in my teaching methods. Furthermore, I believe NYS education system should adapt some of their ways. For example, I loved how for a school that didn't have an art classroom, their artwork was beautiful and 3-D. I would of never incorporated art to be 3-D. I usually use construction paper with color pencils and paint. I also loved the way they separated their grammar. With new words they learned, it was categorized by nouns, adjectives, and verbs.

I can't wait to teach!