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2 and a half weeks after getting back, I am filled with many thoughts and emotions. Truthfully, there hasn't been a day since landing where I haven't missed Europe and the friendships I made while there. I find myself in class, or just in daily life, zoning out and being lost in extremely vivid and happy memories.
I remember the students I taught, the Torremaggiore community and their over-the-top efforts to make sure we felt welcomed and entertained, dancing with my friends, the mother and daughter in Austria who invited me to sit with them and eat dinner, the family I traveled to Salzburg with, my friend Frances who I celebrated New Years dancing and my last days in Vienna with, the Grassi family, and so many more people who made a meaningful impact on my experience in Europe. I remember feeling scared, alone, encouraged, inspired, happy, grateful, welcomed, and fulfilled. Each memory has a feeling associated with it, and with the memories I bring home I also bring these feelings which helped me grow into a more independent and empathetic person. I remember feeling like I never want to leave Europe. I remember missing my family and wishing that they could be there with me to see what I was seeing. Being back in America with them, I realize that while there will be time to back and see new places in Europe, my home lies in Buffalo and it is where I should be. Before leaving, I stated that my hope was to increase my pedagogical repertoire and empathy for ELL students, to learn about myself, and to have an impact on the lives of my future students in Torremaggiore. Through IPDS Italy, I was able to fulfill each of these hopes, as well as learn quite a bit about European culture and history. I can honestly say that my experiences across J-term 2020 were the greatest moments of my life, and greatly impactful on my view of education
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This blog post will cover my experience in the final days (1/19-1/21) on the IPDS Italy trip. We left Torremaggiore around 8:00am and headed towards Pompeii. Ancient stage and theater in Pompeii. This theater could hold up to 2,000 viewers at one time. Home of one of the wealthiest inhabitants living in Pompeii, close to the center of the city. An excavated body from the ruins of Pompeii. Image from the center of Pompeii, with Mt. Vesuvius looming over the city. After Pompeii, we drove past Naples and the Amalfi Coast before arriving in Sorrento where we stayed for two nights. Here are images of both cities. Naples approaching sunset. Amalfi Coast approaching sunset. We had to take these narrow, windy roads along the cliff side in order to get to this overlook. While driving along this was dangerous enough, many motorists sped around us and it was shocking how close they were to incoming vehicles. 1/20/20. Today we traveled to the Isle of Capri. We had to take a 30 minute ferry ride from Sorrento to the Capri harbor and left pretty early to do so. The Isle of Capri was one of the most beautiful place I have ever visited. Here are some picture from the experience. Sorrento at morning. On the right you can see Mt. Vesuvius, and to its left is Naples. Image of the Isle of Capri from our ferry boat. Faraglioni, Capri's three large rock structure that often is used as a symbol for the island. To get here, we had to walk down at least 500 steps, winding left and right down the face of the Island. Nick, on the rocks! At the base of Faraglioni. Behind me is the town of Capri. We had an hour and a half to ourselves in the afternoon, so I broke off from the group and went a direction our tour did not take us. Along this route, I found this sign that says "Via Arco Naturale" which I figured meant something along the lines of "Natural Arch." I started what turned out to be a 25 minute walk one way. Image of the natural arch. It was the most spectacular thing I have ever seen. The walk to get here was incredibly windy because it was along the water and the wind was hitting the trail directly. I found a bench here and sat for 40 minutes, reflecting on the trip and what life was going to be like when I got back home. I also reflected on how different my thoughts were in that moment versus how they were before I went abroad. This experience (IPDS + my Austrian excursion) helped me grow into a more reflective, thoughtful, and aware individual, and this growth was revealed to me when sitting at Arco Naturale. A restaurant, closed for the winter, along the trail towards Arco Naturale. Photo with fellow IPDS Italy participants Kelly + Karly Glowny. What made this trip so special, aside from the teaching experiences and incredible views/history, was the friendships that grew out of our time together. I grew to be incredibly close with Tanner, Lindsey, Alex, Mary, Kelly and Karly, and I truly hope that these friendships continue well past our time spent together in Italy. 1/21/20. Today we officially left Sorrento and traveled through Naples on route to Rome. Here are some pictures. Photo of Naples in the morning. Photo from inside of Naples Cathedral. Tambourine art! 1/21/20, last night in Rome. We got in around 6:00pm and broke off into small groups to wrap up our last things to do in Rome. After getting dinner, Tanner, Lindsey, Alex and I traveled to the Trevi Fountain and made our final wishes. The tradition is that 1 coin thrown means you will come back to Italy, 2 coins is an Italian fling, and 3 coins was that you will find true love. True love was quite tempting, but in the end I threw 1 coin. Italy was just incredible and there is so much more that I want to see someday, such as Florence, Milan, Venice, etc. I hope that my wish comes true! This blog post will cover teaching and events occurring between 1/16/20-1/17/20 as they are somewhat similar. We were asked to teach their Kindergarteners music and literacy, so Dr. Renzoni, Tanner, Lauren, Lindsey and I all separate from our groups and worked together on 1/16 to teach three classes of music and literacy. Below is a picture from the day. Taken by a teacher at Emilio Ricci, it is the only photo I could find with each teacher included. We taught in this large room where we sang a variety of songs with the children and performed both non-locomotor and locomotor movements. I lead a Hello Song, If Your Happy and You Know It, Head Shoulders Knees and Toes, and Elephants have Wrinkles which all focused on teaching the English words for body parts to our students. Each of the classes followed the same format and it really seemed as if the students were retaining the words we taught them. There was unfortunately really no time to check retention levels and assess our students, but, from observation they seemed more excited to learn the words with music than in classes I saw without music. Instead of working with our large group on 1/17, we split up and I operated as the lead teacher for the Italian Kindergarten classes. I sang the same repertoire as 1/16 and achieved similar results (observed seemingly higher retention/vocab understanding rates). When done teaching the four classes of music, the students lined up in the hallway with Italian flags and sang the Italian National Anthem for us. Then, they played the American National Anthem and we sang for them while they waved American flags. It was adorable! Some more students for the singing of the anthems. Two letters from the students in my 5th grade classes. This one is from a boy I always tricked during hi-fives with the turkey move (close your fist at the last second). He drew himself getting me with the turkey instead! This letter is from another student who spoke very good English (she was originally from Albania). Do note that most students could not understand why my name was spelled Nick or did not try to learn it, so almost everyone spelled it as "Nek" or "Neck" or "Nech" ! Very funny stuff. Picture with Senior Grassi (owner of the bnb we stayed at), Tanner, and Alex at our final meal. Before this day, we asked him what his favorite song was, to which he answered without hesitation "Sweet Caroline." So, we sang him and his wife Sweet Caroline and they both cried. He is a very sweet person and it was so nice staying at his BnB. I really fell in love with Torremaggiore and its people. My students were all incredibly sweet, well-behaved, and grateful. The citizens of Torremaggiore were also very grateful of our presence and made a real effort to talk to us when we were walking by. I am so lucky to have spent as long as I did with them and I truly hope to make it back someday.
The retired music teacher was back in action with our 5th grade classrooms, so we spent a majority of the teaching day observing him. Below are some picture of the classroom + what the students were writing as notes. The students sat in a C around the teacher, some standing, some sitting. The teacher would point to a particular pattern on the board and students would play it with their hands. Right hand was downbeats, left hand offbeats. Instead of sound before sight teaching, this demonstrated sight before sound instruction. A picture of a student's notebook. Students were taught fixed do, and learned solfege singing at an early age. They had some songs prepared for us as well, welcoming us into their town and thanking us for our instruction through song. After observing this music teacher, we were placed in a new 1st grade classroom. In all honesty, this was a tough day in the classroom. I had lost my voice from sickness that morning, and my voice kept cracking while singing the hello song. As a result, I did not include as much music instruction and our teaching group focused more on teaching literacy with their activities (read our book aloud, color and label vocab words about the seasons, ven-diagram etc.) Picture of the classroom we taught in. I noticed, from a researcher's perspective, that the students were having a relatively difficult time grasping the vocab words in English we focused on in instruction. We needed to re-explain certain words multiple times, but the students were very excited to learn from us and were patient with our limited Italian. This could be due to the lack of music instruction, the age group, it being our first time teaching them, truly any variable. Today was the only day I walked out of the classroom feeling disappointed with my instruction. It was extremely difficult to sing, and I felt a bit like I was on an island unable to connect with the Italian students. However, I also realized that this day was an opportunity to grow as an educator and began to understand that taking care of my voice/health was extremely important when working as a teacher.
Though our group came prepared to teaching more lessons about the seasons (summer), Emilio Ricci had a separate activity planned for us to teach. This was because the school had their retired music instructor come in to work with our 5th grade classrooms. Instead of our seasons activity, we accompanied Italian teachers in a 1st grade classroom for about two hours and then observed the music classes occurring upstairs. I came to this table without introducing myself and started looking at the coloring pencils. I could tell the students did not immediately accept me into their coloring circle. Instead of introducing myself, I grabbed my own coloring sheet and sang an improvised melody in major tonality. Next, I pointed to a student's page and sang a different melody in minor tonality. Slowly, they began to trust me more and more and smiled when I sang their melody for them. I followed this same strategy in the next classroom. For the boy sitting to my right in the picture, I sang a melody in major tonality, and for the girl next to him I assigned a minor melody. However, at the end of the melody I followed a V7-1 cadence (Ti-Sol-Do) and hi-fived the student on Do. Then, I took the resolution (Do) away and noticed they still rose their hand for a hi-five. After some time with the melody, the girl even hummed along with her melody. I want to further explore the relationship between a child's trust of an adult and the assigning of improvised melody. To me, it is as if music acts as a shared medium allowing an adult to enter their private world of play (even despite a language barrier), and allowing an adult to quickly add something to a child's play environment (musical exploration). Exploring this topic over the course of multiple classes using the same melodies but adding activities throughout the research could yield interesting results.
Today, my teaching partners and I decided to focus on the first season in the book we made for our students: Winter. Our teaching activities focused on building English vocabulary and connecting text to world. After singing the hello song with our children, we moved to reading aloud our entire book. Next, I taught a song about activities to do in the winter-time. One of our motions in the song was to move our poles while skiing, as you can see in the attached gif. Our students LOVED this and kept doing it throughout the rest of our lesson. Picture of me quizzing the kids on certain words in our song, such as ski, poles, skate, snow, cold, shiver, etc. Students had to tell me the Italian translation for the English word I said. I also did motions for some of the words which made them laugh. After the song and quizzing, my partner led the students in matching certain words from our book to their Italian translation. This can be seen on the upper page in our student's notebook. We then had them draw a picture of what winter looks like to them, as can be seen in the lower page in our student's notebook. Photo with my teaching peers and students. I am really lucky to be working with these colleagues and students! Today, the middle school in Torremaggiore put on a performance for us. The performance consisted of a student led explanation of the implemented school system, a concert by the flute students, guitar students, piano students, percussionists, and chorus, and a performance by the music majors on the IPDS trip. Afterwards, we took a tour of the school and played basketball with some of the students! Picture of the auditorium. Picture of the power-point they used to teach us about their school district. ^ Me and my buddy serenading the children of Italy. Basketball at the gym. Today was our first day going into Emilio Ricci Elementary. In the morning, everyone was a bit nervous/excited to get to our school and meet our students. We did not know which class we would have, who we would be paired with, or how long we would be teaching (full class, half class, etc.) It ended up being an incredible day! Picture of me singing a hello song and asking students to sing their names. We began in a 5th grade class singing the hello song. This took up some time as it was taught in both English and Italian. Most students were hesitant to tell me their name when I came to them, but when I sang their names their faces lit up. We then introduced ourselves with pictures from Buffalo and had students introduce themselves by making their own "About Me" pamphlets. The students then had a fruit break and we moved to our next classroom. Picture clapping and singing in our second classroom. Our second class followed the same teaching plan. The kids were very affectionate in this class (I got two hugs) and were more receptive to the idea of singing. The boy with blonde hair smiling at the camera kept singing our hello song throughout the lesson.
This blog post will cover the highlights of my experience in Rome with the IPDS Italy crew. I arrived to Rome on January 3rd. It was confusing trying to find transportation to the hotel and then navigating to the hotel with my luggage. Rome felt a bit unsafe at first, and I was having a hard time understanding Italian after my brain was so adjusted to hearing German in Vienna. Once I settled in my room, I traveled around Rome seeing the Colosseum and walking around side streets. The IPDS crew landed on January 4th and I met them in the hotel. It was really exciting to be with people again, especially people who are my friends. Together we walked around Rome. Here are some pictures: Photo in front of Colosseum. 1/4/20 Photo at Vatican City. 1/4/20 Photo in front of Tibur River. 1/4/20 Photo in front of Pantheon. 1/4/20 Pizza with Salami. 1/4/20 I spent most of today traveling around Rome alone. I wanted to immerse myself in the culture and walked around the city, between small side streets, and stopped at cafes along the way. It was a lot of fun! Photo from Cafe. 1/5/20 Got to see the Pope during the Epiphany! 1/6/2020 I do not have any pictures, but after the Epiphany celebration we all went to the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary. We saw 7 cats and it was a really good time watching cats. Photo with Tanner at the King Victor Emmanuel II Monument. 1/6/20 Photo with bird. 1/6/20 Photo at top of the King Victor Emmanuel II Monument. 1/6/20 Photo with Tanner in front of Colosseum. There will be no fighting today. 1/6/20 We made it to Torremaggiore! It was a 6 hour bus ride to arrive, but when we did the b&b family met us and made us dinner. Here is a picture of the tortellini we had! My plan for today was to try and hit every place left on my list (not including Heiligenstadt). Doing that included visiting Strauss's apartment, Haydn's apartment, the Vienna central cemetery, and the Leopold museum. I also looked into traveling to Eisenstadt to see the Esterhazy Palace where Haydn worked, but doing so would make me cut out at least two of the above places which I was not willing to do. Entrance to Strauss museum. The man who worked at the museum was surprised that I came in, because "we haven't had anyone in 3 days." He did not have anything set up to scan my ticket and told me to just walk around the museum while he gets the technology ready. Inside of museum. There were headphones set up for museum viewers to listen to recordings from the Vienna/Berlin Philharmonic performances of pieces like the Blue Danube Waltz, Overture to Die Fledermaus, Radetzky March etc. While listening, another museum-goer joined me (went from nobody in three days to two in one!) and we listened to the Blue Danube Waltz. He would not talk to me! Actual violin that Strauss played with! Image of Strauss's main room, including his home organ and piano. Photo of photo of Strauss and Brahms. Outside of Haydn's apartment. Inside of Haydn museum. According to the museum descriptions, Haydn would have students arrive early in the morning (while he was still changing! lol) in this room. Original manuscript of The Creation. Original manuscript of The Seasons. Side note: I ran into the guy who listened with me at the Strauss museum! This time, he started laughing since the museums are across town and we started talking. He was a classical music lover from China and it was nice to make a friend! Haydn's garden in the middle of his home. Entry way to Zentralfriedhof (central cemetery). Graves of Brahms and Strauss Grave of Schubert. Grave of Beethoven. I finished the day at the Leopold Museum. I did not know it, but this was the location where much of the items from the Schoenberg Museum was moved to. Much of what I post here is based around Arnold Schoenberg. There was also a great exhibit on his colleague/enemy, Richard Gerstl. Painting of Schoenberg family by Richard Gerstl. Image of manuscript of Schoenberg's Piano Piece op. 11. Richard Gerstl famous self-portrait. Van Gogh self-portrait. Max Pechstein, Young Lady with a Feather Hat. Gustav Klimt, La Collezione. Arnold Schoenberg, self-portrait (1911). Arnold Schoenberg, The Red Gaze. Arnold Schoenberg, Green self-portrait. Arnold Schoenberg, Blue self-portrait. |
AuthorHello and welcome to my blog page! My name is Nicholas and I am a music education major with a minor in philosophy, my primary instrument is percussion, and my dream is to someday teach elementary general music. Through this program, I hope to increase my pedagogical repertoire and empathy when working with English language learners, to learn about myself as an individual, and to make an impact in the lives of the children in Torremaggiore, Italy. Feel free to browse through and return to my blog as I update it with my pedagogical and travel adventures! Archives
February 2020
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