When something changes in your life you tend to look for something in the new situation that is the same as the one that you “left”, to give you something that feels like “a little security”. Often that security can be found in school. When you change homes, your school is always the same, with its lessons and teachers whom initially you hate but that in the end you inevitably start to appreciate. When you start high school, it is always the same, the school desks that have been incised by hundreds of students who sat there before you, and the toilet walls full of graffiti.
But then you come to America and even that sense of security collapses. The entire school system is different. We can start from the fact that in America there are only four years of high school, not five. Then you have to know that they do not call them “first, second, third..” years but they count the “grade”. They begin primary school with the “first grade” and all the other years follow until the 12 grade of high school. The high school is not streamed like in Italy, where we have different “licei” or “scuole professionali”. Everybody goes to the same school but in August, one has to choose the classes one wants to take during the year, according to their preferences and the number of credits required in order to graduate.
The evaluation system is completely different too. Here it is based on the delivery of assignments given, on your general score in a specific class and on your results in the tests and quizzes. Every time that you intervene in class or if you do extra work the teacher takes it into account. The evaluation is made explicit in letters based on the score obtained (A, B,C..)
For each lesson, apart from those specific for seniors, in which there are all students of the same age, in America classes are more or less mixed. And, if Italy prefers frontal lessons, in America the exact opposite is true. There are few lessons in which the teacher explains continuously for 50 minutes. They have instead many educational games and discussions, power point presentations, movies, interactive lessons. In my school each lesson lasts 50 minutes, and every day we have 7 periods
In my city, the school is made up of a number of small buildings that house the various classrooms. There are no internal corridors and in order to go from one class to another we go outdoors, but this is not a problem, because it rarely rains here. Probably in all the small towns like mine, schools have been built in the same way because you rarely see buildings with more than one floor.
So if you thought that the school could be an element of “normality”, forget it. because you can’t find a bit ‘of “familiarity” not even in the school.
Giulia Orifalco (4B) – Correspondent from California, USA