” My journey into Experiential and Community Engaged Learning started in fall 2018. I was fascinated by the stories of a small group of lecturers at FHIS who were working together with the UBC Centre for CEL to develop the use of this practice throughout the various language programs.
Later, I was invited to pilot an Excel component into my ITAL courses. As the Italian Government Lettore at UBC, I was able to reach out and connect with Italian Institutions in Vancouver such as Il Centro and the Italian Chamber of Commerce, which allowed me to design the first two ExCel projects in Winter 2020. It was a real challenge, since both experiences had to be played online, due to Covid-19! But the results were thrilling and I decided to continue in 2021 with 2 more projects.
By then, the responses of ITAL students and the happy reactions of the Italian partners had convinced me that such a highly cultural component could be smoothly and creatively inserted into foreign language courses.
This has been so far one of the best teaching experiences in my whole life.
My gratitude goes to:
– UBC/FHIS for giving me this amazing opportunity;
– The Consulate General of Italy in Vancouver for constantly supporting my projects and helping me in connecting with the Italian Community;
– the Italian partners who were so generous with me and the UBC students.”
Elena Zampieri
Visiting Lecturer of Italian
“I was Elena’s CEL project assistant and her former student. I took ITAL 302 in the winter term of the 2020/21 academic year, where I participated in the Italian restaurant project. For this project, each group needed to interview a restaurant, then create an article and an infographic using the information gained from the interview. During this project, I gained a new perspective of Italian culture and cuisine that is impossible to gain through a textbook or lesson. Listening to the story of someone working within the food industry and seeing their passion for Italian food provided me with a better understanding of the concept of “Italianità” taught in class. It was such a good experience that when I saw the job opening for the project assistant, I applied right away. My goal was to use my past experiences to help improve the projects and provide the students with the opportunity to gain just as much, if not more, from the projects as I did. This job has provided me with many amazing experiences, from assisting the Dante Lives project and learning about Dante’s influence on the world, to helping students explore Italian design by overseeing their interviews of people working in the design sector. It was quite an enjoyable experience.”
Pawan Janjuh
Work Learn project assistant
Special thanks to the Centre for Community-Engaged Learning, the FHIS department and the Italian program for their support throughout the projects.