Carnevale

In one of the schools I work at I organise a Language of the month program, where I try to involve children and parents to celebrate their mother tongue and all the positives of bilingualism. It makes parents feel part of the school and valued and respected, and it gives children (sometimes with not a great deal of English) the mantle of expert for the month where they now impart knowledge to the rest of the school.
This month the language is Italian and we had Italian mothers in several classes today talking about the Carnival in Italy and the characters associated with it. It was wonderful. Well apart from this wee Venetian get up in the photo I walked in on that fair put the wind up me!
I had one of those moments today where for once all the work I put in gives back a reward. One of the parents was in today to talk to her daughter's class. She is first generation Scottish Italian, her daughter second. I talked to her about getting involved with the other Italian parents and she was a little reluctant. She said that when she was at school she hated the fact that she was different from her schoolmates. She realised that she was different in that wine was served with dinner and her dad talked Italian to her. She wanted to fit in, and there was no encouragement other than to speak English and fit in. So, she came to this tentatively.
Yet there was a desire to claim back some of what she'd lost as a girl, her dad's Italian heritage: her heritage, her daughter's. She came in today and hesitantly read a story in Italian and then English. She stumbled over the first few lines in Italian about the story of Arlecchino and was clearly nervous reading it out to her daughter's class. But her confidence grew and I could sense her finding her heritage as the Italian words and phrases came easier to her and flowed and resonated. There it was right there and she was so happy to be expressing it, her daughter beaming at her. Something lost had been found.
Sometimes this job is just the best.