Liceo "A. Meucci" in Ronciglione

Back in December, a number of students from an area academic high school (liceo) came to visit SYA Italy to get a taste of life in an "American School." I chatted with the Physics teacher who came along and I got his email and we organized a visit to the Italian school. The way the Italian education system works, at least what I think I learned in my conversations, is that up until 8th grade, all students are in local elementary and middle schools. During the 8th grade year they take an exam to simply make sure they have mastered the knowledge and material they should as dictated by the government. At that point, students make a decision as to where to finish their education. They can choose a "liceo", which is the academic high school. Their other options are "technical" school and another option, which I wasn't able to truly understand. The liceo's are separated into those that are scientifically focused and those that focus on social sciences or the classics. The school we visited was the scientific liceo in a town called Ronciglione, about a half an hour away from Viterbo. Schools in Italy start at 8AM and there are 5 one hour classes a day with school ending at 130PM so students can get home for lunch. The tradeoff? Classes on Saturday. Students are in the liceo for 5 years and are assigned to a class of about 20-25 with whom they will remain for the entire five years. The class is assigned a room in which they take all their classes for all five years. The students don't move, the teachers do. It was a fun visit, there are lots of differences in the way things are taught, BUT high school students are the same everywhere. Even though I didn't understand the jokes and barbs the Italian students were tossing back and forth, I could totally comprehend the tone and humor that was present. Teenagers are FUNNY in any language!

Liceo "A. Meucci" in Ronciglione

This liceo occupies three different buildings. There are six sections of each of the five classes. 14 sections are in this building, with a middle school on the top floor. 10 sections are in a building nearby and the other 6 a few blocks away.

The school principal, in the red vest, with some of the teachers and the seven students who joined me in the visit. Here we are being fed (it's Italy of course there is food) before class visits.

Before class, I was taken out for coffee by a couple teachers. Shown here are a physics, math and art teacher. Can you guess which is the art teacher?

An empty hallway minutes before the students pour out for break.

My first class visit was to a section of math for 5th year students. Lots of thanks to section 5B, they were fun to watch and interact with. You'll notice that there is only blackboard and chalk. Not much technology in the classroom here in Italy.

Kylie K. and Zoe M. in class with their Italian counterparts. By the way, the writing on the red sweatshirt in the back was "Horny Devil" but as per usual he had no idea what it meant. The girls did their best to explain its meaning.

The students are essentially in a calculus course, but the problem that they started with was to find the point of intersection of the function shown. In private high schools in the US, we would simply plug this into our TI's and use the intersection tool. But here, the students found that there was a change in sign and then honed in on the answer. I learned that Italian students learn the same material (duh, of course) but they spend MUCH MORE TIME on repetition and computation. In my classroom, I ask questions that are more conceptual and ask students to integrate their knowledge whereas students here have to do much more computation.

Maybe because the students are I were in the classroom this morning, the students were really animated. They especially wanted to laugh at the fact their English was better than their teacher's. My student's make fun of my Italian in the same fashion. Here, a couple of the boys got up to explain the problem to their peers.

Professor Argenti on the right then asked me to present the students a problem. I asked the students if they liked this teacher because I could tell that he is the kind of teachers connect with. They confirmed my hunch.

And so I do my thing and it becomes a math teacher problem challenge session.

One of the American students up at the board. The heat is on!

By the end of class, the students in back were bunched up in front. Here, as in all of Italy, the boys have no problems being totally physical with each other in a platonic way. It's totally great because they are always jumping on each other and pushing each other around. It's fun and funny to watch.

The second class I visited was a 3rd year Physics class. Here is Professor Bracciani, the one with whom I organized the visit, confiscating a passed note and reading it aloud. Ahh, teachers everywhere united in battling the passing of the notes!