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Gabriele Del Mela, Alberto Del Mela e Izumi Hashimoto |
Gabriele Del Mela, Alberto Del Mela |
Staff: Gerda Schwenger e Caterina Quercioli |
Gabriele Del Mela, Alberto Del Mela |
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LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR
I have been teaching Italian for 30 years. I have taught Italian in Italian schools, in Swiss schools, in American schools, as associate, full-timer, part-timer, free-lance, and since 1989, as director, at our school (it is my brother an me), Scuola Toscana. In almost 20 years we have worked with more than 5000 students, from the five continents and of all ages. I taught my first class when I was 22, in 1982 - if I compare the teaching at that time and now, it is really different: the engagement of the instructor, and their will, is the same, but the techniques have evolved a lot and are much more sophisticated: in the eighties it was possible almost for everyone who was nice and a bit creative to be a teacher of Italian; nowadays, first of all you need a formal University-level education to get a solid background (in the language, yes, but also in psychology, communication, linguistics, semantics etc.) - and later you have to do a lot of hours of training, if possible in different environments, if possible in different countries abroad...you still need to be nice, dynamic and creative - but this is only the starting point. Being a director implies many other responsibilities for my brother and me: we are trainers, counselors, friends to our instructors and our students. We think that nowadays even a small business like ours has to do its efforts toward a good corporate citizenship; we are committed to loyalty toward our customers, our teachers, our community: our school complies with all the safety rulings as prescribed by the European Union, our teachers - mostly women - are professional, regularly registered (not part-time, underpaid students). We try to have the lowest impact on the environment (see "a green choice" for details) and we cooperate with the Istituti di Cultura and the Florence City Authority in offering scolarships to deserving students allover the world. |
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We hope that the "humanity" of a brand - its willingness to address social and environmental issues - will become increasingly important in attracting consumers, and that the ethical behavior of companies will have a bigger and bigger influence on consumers in the future: we want you to know that, attending a course at the Scuola Toscana, you are also doing "the right thing". The most important - and the most beautiful thing you can see in a school like ours is that the students come for the language and stay for the friendship; they arrive in Florence, Italy, and then get to know people from different parts of the world, with different languages, professions, status, ages, religions; working together in the class they get to know the different cultures beyond the usual stereotypes: and even if they stay only for a couple of weeks, their experience is meaningful and enriching. I think the most important lesson we learn at our school is not in Italian, but in the cross-cultural experience.
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