Provided working was never my dream number one in life, I’ve always known I wanted to be a teacher. As a little girl in elementary school, whenever I had to do my homework, I pretended that my stuffed animals were my students and I was the teacher. My little class was composed of a panda (Celeste), two bears (Oscar and Paddington), a seal (Tumpy), a duck (Alba), and two reindeer (Celeste and Bakito). I was the one to finally do the homework. Obviously. But at least I felt I was helping someone else learn something.
Another game I used to play was to live in a boarding school in the English countryside. I always had a strong fascination for this type of school, lost in the middle of nowhere, and loved all the books and films with this setting, like Dead Poets Society, Never Let Me Go, Harry Potter, and so on. I wished I could go to one of these schools one day, if not as a student, at least as a teacher.
During my years of elementary and middle school (in Italy we have 5 years of elementary school and 3 years of middle school, then high school, for 5 years) everything went smoothly, I was good at every subject, especially in Italian and foreign languages, I had some friends and a good relationship with my teachers, or at least with most of them. I thought I knew what I wanted: I’d go to linguistic high school, then to a college lost in the English countryside and then, I’d become a teacher.
Things didn’t exactly go as planned, though. They never do. When I told my mother I wanted to study languages in high school, she didn’t tell me I couldn’t, but told me I could do something better. She was never the type of parent who strongly forbade me something, she’d rather appear disappointed and hint that I could do something more. Something more special and ambitious, because I was so smart and I could do everything I wanted. Except for what I really wanted. Languages were so easy, I could seamlessly learn them by travelling a bit. My best friend at the time was going to classical high school (the most difficult one in Italy, the one where you study Ancient Greek and Latin) and so, without giving much thought to it, I decided to choose the same type of school.
Of course, I’m not blaming my mother for choosing the wrong school, but I think that especially when we’re young it’s so easy to question what we’re sure of and listen to the wrong piece of advice. Questioning our thoughts is fundamental in life, but sometimes, as kids, we have these simple, clear truths, we tend to know what we like when we’re little, but then the expectations of our parents and society get in the way and we then spend so many years trying to go back to our own way.
My high school years were kind of dark. I didn’t know anyone and needed a pretty long period to make some friends (three of them are still among my best friends now), the lessons and new subjects were really difficult and I remember having to study at least 4-5 hours every day just to get through. My class was really competitive and I often had the feeling that it was one big vanity fair about being the smarter. But I didn’t care about that competition. The first two years I was still a decent student, but then I just stumbled and couldn’t get up. No teacher gave me a hand. I had bad marks in everything, I couldn’t feel motivated about anything we did, I felt suffocated, and couldn’t see the purpose of what we were doing. Luckily I didn’t flunk out, because I always managed to save my butt at the last minute. But I remember those years as a long drag in a dark tunnel, unable to see the light in the distance. I had some issues at home and I was so insecure, especially in my love and social life. I felt like I couldn’t fit in and I was helpless to change my destiny. I withdrew into myself for a long time, looking for oxygen in books and films. Luckily I had some good friends that kept me anchored to reality. I don’t how would I manage without them.
After graduating from high school, on one side I was full of hope for my future, but on the other side, I was emotionally exhausted and completely without self-confidence. I kind of still knew what I wanted, but I didn’t have the right energy to jump into my projects. What I knew for sure was that I had to leave my parents’ house and move abroad. And so I did, I chose Germany because in that period of my life, I was studying German and I wanted to improve the language, but I didn’t have clear plans about what to do there. When I was still in school and I had to think about which university to choose, it was a period of my life I was feeling extremely lonely and without support. When I said I wanted to study something concerning languages, no teacher gave me any tips and my parents had pretty much the same reaction they had 5 years before when I had to choose the high school: you could do something better. Since I liked chemistry in school I started thinking that this could be a good idea then, but deep inside I knew the only option I saw from that path, was to become a chemistry teacher in school.
I had then a couple of years of confusion and a lot of movement, I stayed in Germany for a while, but couldn’t get a place in the University there, went back to Italy, started studying chemistry, dropped out almost immediately, found a job as a night waitress and then left everything again and travelled in Ireland and Scotland, where I found a job at a hostel. The only constant was my interest in listening to all the stories of the people I met, I developed some of my most intense friendships during those years, and, especially during the period I was in Scotland, I learned so much about myself. After losing my job at the hostel I decided to return to my hometown and finally start university. I knew I wanted to do something that would allow me to become a teacher, but had no idea about what was the best path for me to follow, so I chose languages and literature because I knew it was something that interested me and could be related to education.
During that period I started to work as a private tutor for high school kids. I had two students, two brothers, I mainly helped them with Latin and English, but we also did other subjects. I could see myself in them so much, two kids forced to do things they felt no motivation for. I didn’t get a lot of money for that, but I genuinely enjoyed the job, it made me feel competent and useful, like I had the right life experience to help someone else going through something I had lived before. Maybe I had never been an excellent student, but I definitely was a good guide. When I started my second year of university, I decided to take a certification to teach Italian as a foreign language, so I attended a two-month course in Bologna and got my DITALS. Since I was still studying and already had a side job as a tutor, I didn’t look for anything new for a while, but then, during the 2020 pandemic, I sent an application for Preply and Italki, two well-known platforms for language learning.
Since then, I met a lot of students from all over the world, especially native German and English speakers. They had the most diverse backgrounds, but I’d say that the majority of people I taught were older than me. What I loved about this job was being able to enter the little world of another person, since, doing online classes, we often saw each other in our homes, often with cozy clothes and no makeup. I had tons of honest and deep conversations with people from all over the world. During those dark days that was pure oxygen. After a few years, though, I started feeling a bit overwhelmed by spending so many hours in front of a computer with no physical contact with the people I worked with, it made me feel like I was in some sort of parallel universe where you can talk about each other’s lives with honesty and intimacy, but without any experience of their physical presence. Somehow I felt I was nowhere, not really in my home (at that time I was living in Barcelona), not really there with my students. When I finally graduated I definitely needed a breath of fresh air, so I took some time off to travel and after many vicissitudes, I ended up volunteering in Chios (a tiny island in Greece) for a couple of months. My main task was to teach English in the women’s safe space. I didn’t really know what to do at first, because I had never really taught a class before and never faced learners with such different backgrounds: some of them could speak English but were illiterate, others could write, but couldn’t speak a word of English, others couldn’t do either of these things. But, in the end, I found my way to build a class and I did my best to help everyone learn something with their rhythm.
Almost a year later, I had another significant experience in a place called Escuela de Solidaridad in Granada. This was a social community built by a man called Ignacio whose purpose was to create a community for people in need of a home. There were many active projects there, like the tailoring lab, the garden, the theatre, and the kindergarten. I loved how everybody was willing to share their knowledge and teach other people, I think that was exactly my idea of a school: a place where people of all ages could learn from each other through practice and sharing.
After so many years of moving and experiencing, I felt like I needed a little bit of peace and stability, to tidy my ideas. That’s why I decided to come back to Italy and look for a stable job and I found one as a receptionist in a hostel, which is not related to teaching, but it’s still a job where the relationship with people is fundamental. I kind of feel like I’m taking a break at a gas station after running out of gas. I’m wondering when the call of the wild will knock on my door again. But for the moment I’m appreciating the peace of mind I can have by perceiving a stable income. I can have a sense of perspective over my working years and my experience. The teaching part always came back but in a different shape. Sometimes I wish I had a more structured career path so that I could teach something specific in a school. Sometimes I think that I should go back to online teaching and build some sort of business (by the way, I still have some online students, but this is not my main source of income anymore), but I noticed that while I really enjoy teaching, I’m not a good businesswoman. I still don’t have so many skills to do something like that and actually, I don’t even want to spend my life working online. Some people don’t know what they want or like, I do know that, but I don’t know which shape I should give to it. I think I’m still looking for a way to put all my different experiences together. I’m a very idealistic person and I always see so many options and possible connections, that I often struggle to put all the puzzle pieces together.
Something I came to learn this year, was definitely being patient. I’ve always been tolerant and patient with people, but never with myself or with things. But now that I have some peace of mind I can accept that some things need time and “fertilizer” to bloom. I still don’t know what type of teacher I will be, if I’ll only teach languages online or do something about sex education (another thing that interests me a lot and I studied last year) or I’ll eventually open my little school. I think we’re told from a very young age that there’s only one possible path and if we don’t take it right when we’re 18, then we’ve made a mistake, on the other side there are many people (and sometimes I think I risk being one of them) that in front of so many options just get completely lost and end up building nothing. But I think that some paths are not linear, you make your own by trying different directions and, in the end, you can find your way.
As I said, for me it was always clear that I wanted to be a teacher, but I knew that in order to become a good teacher, I have to learn a lot myself, and since I didn’t particularly enjoy the classic education model, I had to find my own life school, taking a path that is maybe messy and full of bends, but I trust it’ll lead me where I have to go.
