I met Betta at the Ballyneety English
Summer Camp. She has brought a group of
35 Italian teenagers on a 2-week summer camp to study English in Ireland. The camps are a mix of English lesson and fun
activities and are taught by volunteers such as Steve and myself. Betta runs a Language School in Como, close
to Milan. She has brought this group of
city kids here as much to introduce them to the country and give them a new
experience as to immerse them in an atmosphere where English is spoken as the
native language. But how did she come to
be running an English School in Italy?
Over a glass of red wine, Betta begins to tell me her story…
Betta is now 47 years old and grew up in
Milan. She moved to her grandma’s villa in
Como when she was 16 but wasn’t initially happy about this transition. Soon she was old enough to get a scooter and with
the acquisition of wheels she began to taste freedom and gain her independence. Being the fourth of 5 siblings, she had often
just followed the older kids around.
Finally she says, she feels she has started her life…
Betta went to a college to obtain a diploma
in ‘Interpretation and Translation’.
Even as a young girl, Betta had many
experiences in life. She moved to the US
for a year working as an au pair in Greenwich Village, Connecticut. She found herself working for a family
looking after 5 young kids and knew even at a young age that she felt
passionate about working with kids.
Her dad was in the business of
manufacturing spectacle frames and saw in Betta the child with the potential to
help him in the family business. He
enticed her to get involved by offering her the chance to travel to many
European countries, promoting the sale of his frames. She visited Greece, Norway, Spain, Portugal,
Sweden, France, Finland, Cyprus - having the time of her life but not really
feeling passionate about being a sales girl.
She took up an office post in Switzerland and the pay and full time job
gave her the break she was looking for to leave home at 22 to start living on
her own...
Betta was really enjoying her life but she
also took her job seriously. It was
while on an assignment to an exhibition in England that she met the Englishman
she eventually married. They moved to
Dorset and suddenly at 26 Betta felt her life was undergoing change once more. She found it hard to fulfill the expectations
of being a wife in England. Integrating
into the English culture and the more formal way of doing things was very
foreign to the carefree spirit of this Italian girl. During a visit to England
her dad confirmed that he no longer saw in Betta the spirit and essence of his
Italian daughter…
In 1992 she had her son and she started to
feel alive again. She reveled and
delighted in motherhood and despite the happiness she felt in her new role she
knew deep inside she wasn’t living the life she craved. About a year after her son was born her dad
offered them a job in Hong Kong, as by now she and her husband were both
working for the family business. It was
a breath of fresh air for their marriage and she hoped they could find
happiness and a new beginning in a place that was neutral territory for them
both with no pressures from family ties or cultural obligations. Their first couple of years in Hong Kong was
great and Betta began to feel deeply that she needed to give her son a sibling
and so she had a second child – a daughter who was born in Hong Kong.
Despite the new location, there were still
cultural differences that were difficult to overcome. Betta’s Italian spirit demanded that she had
a wide circle of friends while her husband was far more reserved and even
resented this desire for so much companionship.
Eventually, after 3 years in Hong Kong a holiday with her kids in Italy
turned into the opportunity she needed to leave her marriage.
Her parents helped her to assimilate back
to life in Italy. She worked for her dad
in the family business and her kids assimilated to the Italian way of being. She knew she wanted her kids to retain the English
language - their dad was an Englishman after all and she wanted to make sure
those lines of communication remained open.
Her daughter Carlotta was only a year old when she moved back to Italy
and would only let Betta speak in English to her if she pretended to be a
little rabbit. Every night they played
with the little puppet that became the tool for her daughter to develop English
skills.
When the principal of the nursery her
daughter attended realized this little girl’s language skills, Betta was
invited to come along and teach English at the nursery. She negotiated working hours with her dad, so
she could spend time teaching English.
Slowly word got around and soon one of the mums invited her to teach
English at her house to her own kids and those of her friends. Betta was now formally teaching English as a
part time job to 6 kids between the ages of 3-4. When it was time for these kids to go to pre-school,
the mum arranged for Betta to teach English at the school that her daughter
attended.
When the kids turned 5 and went to the
State Primary school there was a problem.
The school system in Italy did not start teaching English till the kids
turned 8. Mums have a huge influence in
the curriculum of Italian schools. Somehow,
this group of women persuaded the school Principal to change the policy and
engage Betta to teach English to the younger kids. They were starting to break the rules…and
Betta was beginning to be noticed.
The rabbit had now morphed into a bear and
her teaching was beginning to get serious.
Betta went back to the lady who had got her started on this path and
asked her for help. This mum was working
with kids who had special needs and put Betta in touch with the Glen Dorman method
of teaching kids. This teaching method
was designed to teach kids with special needs but it is a revolutionary method where
students are encouraged to develop mental abilities to recognize words and
pictures. Glen Dorman was able to teach
kids with mental issues to read when they were 3 years old and Betta decided she
needed to learn this method of teaching.
She enrolled in a training course being run in Florence and began to
apply these methods to help very young kids develop an incredible vocabulary in
English.
Betta was slowly obtaining the tools she
needed to expand her teaching and her school.
She enrolled in College once again and obtained a second diploma in
Community Management. She rented a
church hall to start her own school and this saw the birth of her very own
Language school. She ran the school on
her own for a year but as the demand for English expanded Betta realised she
needed help. She employed her first
teacher…
Her journey in teaching English has taught
her much and she has bravely faced the many challenges that have come her way. One of these was dealing with a child who was
dyslexic and realizing that even at a young age, children are just associating
patterns with words so it didn’t really matter if a word was upside down or not
– a child will still recognize it. By
the time these kids were about 8 years old they had a massive vocabulary but unfortunately
it isn’t retained!
Betta’s school is growing fast and by now she
also started to open her own family run kindergarten. Using government grants that were given to
families who banded together to look after their own, Betta started to use the
available social services to fulfill another dream. The family run kindergartens slowly expanded. Soon, there were 3, 1 of which was in the
city. Betta was also teaching English to
the little ones at these centers and then using the premises in the city as an English
Language school after 4pm. The
Kindergartens were not open for a long time.
As the kids grew up this sort of care was no longer needed and although
new families signed up, they didn’t seem to have the same passion to keep it
going as the first bunch of families who initiated it.
Betta finally sold the Kindergartens and
rented new premises to open a new English school in Como. She now has 9 teachers and 214 kids ranging
in age from 3 – 16! Her school is
certified as a Cambridge ESOL EXAM Preparation Centre. She has won many awards for her work and in 2010
the Regional Council awarded her a very prestigious prize for being a Successful Business Entrepreneur, for providing
opportunities for women and for the rapid expansion of her home grown business.
Betta’s story inspires me because I see in
her, a woman who has had the courage to follow her dream. I see a woman who was not afraid to walk away
from her marriage despite the traditions she came from, because it meant living
a life that was not consistent with her spirit.
These are not easy choices but being honest to yourself and realizing
your passions calls for sacrifices that many people are not prepared to
make. She has shared with us her secret
to teaching kids, the secret of emotional learning. Give them your trust she says, break through
their filters and let them trust you.
Betta, it has been a pleasure to get to
know you in the limited time we had and I wish you all the best in your
journey.
Betta has invited us to visit her in Como
and hopefully, our travels and schedules will allow us a visit to her villa in
Northern Italy enabling another connection with a fellow traveller can continue
into the future…
If
you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake
up. ~J.M. Power
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