World Teachers' Day has been celebrated every year on 5 October, it has been promoted by UNESCO since 1994 to support teachers recognising their rights and to ensure the educational needs of future generations are addressed.
The celebration makes us remember that education is crucial in fostering progress in each country. Italian children and young people, who had their schools closed for almost 4 months because of the pandemic, are well aware of that. Education and teachers are key to the achievement of the Sustainable Development goal 4 of the UN Agenda 2030. The Goal 4 is actually concerned with "Providing quality, fair and inclusive education and learning opportunities for all".
On the occasion of 2020 World Teacher’s Day we want to focus on the experience of a special school, where many new Italians - young and not so young - study to build their own path and integrate in our country: the School of Italian Culture and Language of the Community of Sant'Egidio in Rome, Naples, Genoa and many other Italian and European cities.
In fact, Italian Language and Culture courses have been resumed in Rome at Palazzo Leopardi, the new centre of the school . The courses, from A1 level to C1, can be attended both face-to-face and online. There are already more than 700 students enrolled and enrolments will continue in the coming months. The online classes, implemented during the lockdown as it was necessary for students not to stop learning , have proved very useful now. More students can participate, even those not residing in Italy.
The school has also started to offer Higher Education Diploma Courses for “Mediators in Social Interculture in Europe”; in the next few days ceremonies will be held to deliver language certificates to students.
This year - as we still experiment continuous alert for the pandemic - the school aims at offering also information about health and prevention measures. Experienced doctors have joined language teachers to offer health education and virus prevention lessons, infection prevention - particularly Covid-19 infection and the importance of vaccination.
The Scuola di Lingua e Cultura Italiana (School of Italian Language and Culture) wishes all the teachers to build a school that - as Zygmunt Bauman said - in today's liquid society "can open up hope for a better future"
