AN ENCOUNTER OF FELLOWSHIP

An Encounter of Fellowship
February 1, 2002

My name is Sarah Burgess. I am an American student studying in Florence, Italy through Gonzaga University of Spokane, Washington. Since 1981, students from the program have traveled to Scandicci, outside of Florence, to volunteer in the classroom of Carmelina Rotundo, an English teacher at Guglielmo Marconi and Aldo Pettini School.This year, Wednesday has been my day to visit Carmelina Rotundo’s fourth grade classroom. Early in the semester, on an ordinary Wednesday, Carmelina invited me to attend a European teacher’s meeting she was planning for that coming Friday. She suggested that I would enjoy and learn from the experience, so I decided to take her up on the offer.
I took the number 26 bus from the station at 11:30...a bit behind schedule. I live a half an hour bus ride away in a pensione in the center of Florence. Carmelina had said to meet her at the church at 11:30! There was really no way I could make it to the conference on time. Since I was late, I also wasn’t certain where to meet the group. I waited in the classroom for an hour before I saw a group of adults, Carmelina, and Annalisa Tiribilli with a video camera walking towards the school. This was my first meeting with teachers from Spain, Belgium, and Finland. Danny Raemdonck, from Belgium, was tall and thin Santiago Pena from Spain was short and more, shall we say, stocky in figure. His traveling partners were a fellow Spanish teacher, Nelia Hernando Ibanez and her husband Andres Palacios. Two teachers from Finland, Ville Kiure, headmaster of his school, and Kirsi Laihonen, completed the group.
From outside, we were led into a classroom to drop off coats and packages and pass out papers of children’s drawings. Lorenzo Bertolani, president of Invetriata, gave everyone the gift of a paperback back book entitled Dondola, Dondola Cavallino with poems and illustrations from local artists. It was suggested that we translate the book into our own languages so that the gift of these words can be taken around the world.
From the classroom, a group of students escorted us to the dining room for lunch. We were served an Italian meal: courses of tortellini, meat and vegetables, dessert, red wine and spumanti, and espresso. My tummy loved me. As a student my usual meals, in comparison, are dull and rather tasteless. The ambiance of the room was also welcoming and pleasing. Taped on the walls around us, handmade signs of each country welcomed one and all to the table. On the table sat a pizza made by Carmelina’s husband Sayed, specially decorated with the welcome message “Benvenuti in Italia” in cooked pizza dough Federico Marucelli, the Dirigent of Marconi and Pettini schools, dropped in for good wishes and a short speech. Assessore Claudio Raspollini gave us each a book in English entitled Vivere a Scadicci with pictures of Scandicci and the surrounding countryside.
During lunch, Carmelina ducked out to attend to her class meeting that hour. Within forty minutes or so, the whole class came into the dining room to pick us up and lead us on a tour of the school. Though the tour had been scheduled, we must have looked quite funny passing from classroom to classroom. Into each classroom down the hall entered a mob of students and teachers, greeting the teacher, hearing a bit from the kids and moving to the next room. The tour ended in Carmelina’s English room where the students sang for us, a song about bottles falling off walls.
Ten green bottles, standing on a wall
Ten green bottles, standing on a wall,
and if one green bottle should accidentally fall
there’ll be nine green bottles standing on the wall
Nine green bottles…
Somehow Carmelina coerced me into singing with the children, though I confess ignorance of ever hearing the song before. If, in the future, I again encounter it, I now have a memory that will instantly come to mind!
Before school ended, we shared tea and cookies with the children, thanks to the planning of the childrens parents. The kids asked us, in practiced English, questions like “What is your name” and “What is your favorite color” and we went around the table answering.
Do you have any children? What are their names?
Do you have any pets?
What is your favorite animal?
What is your favorite food?

Annalisa was back with the camera, asking us each to say something in our own language. Again we were herded out and taken to Badia a Settimo, a nearby church, for a tour. The tour was fantastic with much more to see than I expected when we entered. Luciano Graziani of Amici di Badia, our guide, spoke only in Italian. Though Carmelina translated, I still missed a lot. My limited Italian also was not sufficient enough to understand most of what he was saying, and Carmelina only translated a portion of the tour. So I saw all, and heard some!
From there we moved to an Archeological Museum at Ex Benozzo Gozzoli School. Dinner followed a tour of the museum and consisted of a wonderful assortment of Italian dishes, brought in by the Italian teachers and set up buffet style. We ate and talked for hours, learning from each other the issues of our separate lives and cultures. After dinner, we were driven back to Florence. I said goodbye to the people I had spent so long with. They were gearing up for another busy day, and I, my homework and another day of traveling. So ended my day of unanticipated fun and pleasure.

On the Didactic and Human Experience between Elementary and Gonzaga University Students

Since 1981, American students from the Gonzaga-in-Florence program have been able to work with younger Italian students through the classroom of Carmelina Rotundo. Carmelina has been teaching English for many years, and through the contact of the students of Gonzaga University, has seen the unification of students of different cultures. Since 2000, students from Middlbury College have also visited the classroom. This cultural contact allows Carmelina and her students to keep working with the language that is very much alive and changing.
American students leave parts of themselves behind for the young Italians. There is the example of the student, Rose Alokolaro, who made a star with the name of each students in the classrooms of the four classes she visited. This was her message to the students, that though she was out of the country this star could remind them of the light they brought into her life when she visited the school. Janet Burcalow, a teacher from Gonzaga spending a semester with Gonzaga-in-Florence, left behind gifts for everyone she had worked with researching the difference between Italian meals and American meals. John Caputo, a teacher in Gonzaga connected to the students who volunteer in Carmelina’s classroom, wrote to her “Two of the greatest adventures this last spring was being able to bring my Gonzaga students to a meeting whith the American Counsel General Lari Martinez and second, a day of visiting Carmelina Rotundo at her school. My American university students are able to visit at the school and interact with the Italian children both formally in the classroom and informally on the playground. Whether teaching a lesson about America, helping with reading, or trading drawings and letters, these experiences offer a richness to cross-cultural contact for these young people that last a life-time.” The museums and churches of Florence are enough to take your breath away. But even more important for us are the people of Florence. And Carmelina Rotundo is one of those very important people”. And Lyn Cunningham, another teacher chose to sacrifice a day of touring Florence to come out and work with the classroom.
The pupils know and understand the sacrifice of time the Gonzaga students make to be with them, and they appreciate their visits so much more for it. Through this exchange of cultures American students, elementary students, and Carmelina experience the didactic and human experience of cross-cultural exchange. “With them,” says Carmelina on behalf of her students “we learn and we do activities [such as] parties, pancakes, and tea party [that] we enjoy a lot. What a sorrow [for us] when they leave. We hope always they return back.”

On the School in which Carmelina teaches English

The school itself is named after a headmaster, Aldo Pettini (1922-1994). The largest room is named after Benozzo Gozzoli, the glory of Piana di Settimo and the painter of the splendid frescos in the Medici-Riccardi Palace in Florence. His murals in the palace were inspired by Epiphany processions that used to take place in Florence on the 6th of January, past the site of palace. Today this procession, called Cavalcata dei Magi, is recreated each January from the Pitti Palace to the Duomo, thanks to the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore under the direction of president Anna Mitrano.
Another building in Badia a Settimo bears the name Benozzo Gozzoli. Until the 90’s it was an elementary school. Now the AVIS Mineralogy-Paleantology group of Scandicci (founded in October of 1984) have transformed the school into a museum. It houses a permanent exhibition of minerals and fossiles and slide projections.
Carmelina Rotundo, with the help of Sarah Burgess