Blog #8: Service Learning Reflection

Iqbal Masih is the name of a young boy who was sold into Child bonded labor at 4 years old for what today would amount to $12. He escaped bondage at 10, and began to speak out against child slavery, for freedom, and for schools for all Pakistani children. However, on Easter Sunday in 1995, when he was only 12 years old, he was brutally murdered by, who many believe, was an organized crime hit put out by those who he was protesting against. Today, many public schools have been inspired to adopt the name of this young hero, and continue to promote his dream of 'freedom, education, and a childhood for every child'.  

My initial impressions of Iqbal Masih, located on the outskirts of Rome, Italy was an overall sense of dedication that the faculty and staff maintain towards each and every one of their students, in addition to the integrity of the institution who lent its' name.

I was very intimidated on my first day of service learning at Rome's Iqbal Masih. I was extremely excited for the opportunity to interact with the children but I felt completely out of my element not being able to communicate using their native Italian, and having to depend entirely on body language, facial expressions, and a few Italian words and phrases that I had only learned a week prior to my first visit. However, after the end of my first day at Iqbal Masih, I knew that this school was the perfect fit for me and what I wanted to focus on during my time in Rome.

Iqbal Masih has, in total, 47 Roma children, the majority of which were born in Italy but do not have Italian citizenship. By law, a person can obtain Italian citizenship based on either ancestry (the origins of their parents) or by where they were born. However, the latter is usually a long and grueling process. The predominant ethnicities of the Iqbal Masih Roma children are Serbian and Romanian. Furthermore, due to centuries worth of cultural based practices, in addition to societal discrimination, Roma children and their parents don't believe school is necessary or beneficial for the sake of their survival or future. Therefore, kids rarely do their homework, are unmotivated to improve their literacy skills outside the classroom, they frequently forget the majority of their subjects, are often held back from progressing onto the next grade level of their education, and are not socially integrated among their peers or Italian society as a whole.

Within my first couple of visits to Iqbal Masih, in having the opportunity to observe in several different classrooms, I became extremely intrigued by the few Roma students I came into regular contact with. Two particular students were Sandra & Camilla.

Camilla is a 10 year old fourth grader and Roma student who has been consistantly struggling in school. She is trying to overcome learning deficiencies in both mathematics and reading. She is a very sweet girl but it is blatantly obvious that has been encountering many difficulties in her school subjects for some time. Furthermore, she is incredibly shy and even rarely communicates with her teacher. It takes her a lot longer to feel comfortable enough to interact with her peers, and she is a year older than the other students in her grade level. Unfortunately, she was held back from moving foward with her education due to her lack of proficiency in her school subjects and the inadequacy of her socialization skills. 

Sandra is also a fourth grader at Iqbal Masih but has not yet been held back. She too is incredibly shy, and is, unfortunately, showing the same problematic signs in interacting with her peers and instructor. Her teacher once told me that Sandra is often afraid when she comes to school that her classmates will no longer like her. Furthermore, she is also having a hard time keeping up academically due to her infrequent school attendance. For reasons that I am unaware of, she can only attend school twice a week and the result is proving to be extremely detrimental to her education and her integration into Italian society.

If I had the opportunity to go back and make further observations at Iqbal Masih, I would be interested in seeing how culturally based courses, designed specifically as lessons for teachers, could help facilitate the integration process more effectively among their Roma students. I would ask to have a meeting with our main contacts, Paola Arduini and Susannah, to discuss the possibility of me sitting-in on some teacher training courses to observe how certain skills and/or instucting methods would be implemented into their classrooms. It would be extremely fascinating for me to understand exactly what educators and administrators feel would be the best methods to teach teachers in how to successfully educate their pupils. For instance, I'm currently wondering what information would be shared in terms of Roma culture? What potential stereotypes would be exposed against the Roma communities? Would these lessons be broken down in various components focusing on different Roma groups/ethnicities/religious beliefs? Or, would these lessons address, solely, one all encompassing ethnic and minority group considered by either themselves or by Italian society as Roma people? How would they determine the best ways to meet each individual Roma student' needs? How would they suggest the best way to successfully convey the importance of an education to the Roma students' parents? Or an entire Roma community? How would they suggest the best way for the Italian Public School system to effectively engage with the different Roma communities who are potentially affecting the academic progress of their students? These are the questions that I would be interested in addressing, finding answers too, and seeing incorporated in Italian public schools. Thank you.