A dream come true: a bilingual school in Modena

I've always known that my calling is children. And I've studied and researched for children for years.

I graduated in Philosophy, with a thesis on Pedagogy, and then, when the faculty finally reopened, closed during the early years of the reform, I also graduated in Pedagogy. The purpose of my studies and research was to identify the best educational approach for early childhood, to find the formula for a desirable school. Through research, I stumbled upon and fell in love with bilingual educational models that expose children to a second language from their first months of life. I researched and tested these theories at La Scuola Italiana a Londra. From London, I moved to San Francisco, California, to work at La Piccola Scuola Italiana di San Francisco, which soon became, thanks to an educational community of constant research and excitement, La Scuola Internazionale di San Francisco. The children I met, watched grow, and hold dear to my heart, have shown me that being bilingual brings immense cognitive benefits, opens the mind and develops thinking, as well as making us citizens of the world, welcoming and ready for the future. But bilingualism isn't enough; a school must be founded on a solid educational approach, which I identified in the Reggio Children Approach, an educational philosophy renowned in America but of Italian origin. A non-directive educational approach, where children's questions are never definitively answered but are helped to find their own answers, generating a spiral of inquiry and discovery. The children convinced me that this was the path to follow: a school where the best educational philosophy was combined with a natural use of the English language: a beautiful school, the school I hope for my children.

Having reached this realization, a dream was born within me, which I revealed to an Italian journalist who interviewed me after Prime Minister Renzi's visit to La Scuola di SF: my dream was to return to Italy and open a bilingual Italian-English school, inspired by the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy. Less than two years after that interview, my dream is coming true: I will open the best school I could wish for children: an English school where, however, Italian aesthetics and culture are not forgotten. The school is in the heart of Modena, at Via Monte Sabotino, 97.

Registration is now open, but places are limited.
www.educationest.org