A brief history of The Story of Silence site…
I’ve included part of my sabbatical proposal if you’re interested in knowing more about The Story of Silence and how it came about. My proposed sabbatical idea has changed slightly but it’s core, its heart has remained the same…here is an excerpt of my proposal…
---------------------
Truly, the primary motive for requesting a sabbatical leave is time. A sabbatical leave would grant me the time to continue research begun almost five years ago—research that consisted of personal interviews of all of the women on the maternal side of my family. Women like my 89-year-old great aunt, and my 83-year-old grandmother who has lived through numerous tragedies of World War II in a small town of Sicily, in Italy. These personal interviews also extended to my aunts and my mother, all of whom immigrated to the United States in the 1960’s and returned to their home country 20 years later.
In every interview I began seeing common threads — resilience, perseverance, strength of character, an exceptional belief in family, hard-work, empathy, compassion, and love of one self that translated to love of others. This thread was the catalyst in seeing the possibility of writing/transcribing all of these interviews into a book or, as I now see fit, into an oral history. This work opened me to self-reflection, a feeling of inclusion, a personal connection to history, valuable inter-personal skills, while strengthening my listening, oral and written skills as well. It opened my eyes to the tremendous pride I feel in my ethnicity, allowing me to embrace it whole- heartedly and see the value in the differences and similarities I have with others. It fostered an open-ness to all ethnicities, races and cultures. All of these elements constitute one of the greatest gifts I have received in life.
As a[n] [Italian] teacher, I feel it is not enough to simply teach the language from textbook drills and rote exercises; I pride myself in instilling a sense of inclusion, a personal connection to the material and to others, which in turn allows for self reflection. I foster inter-personal skills in order to strengthen their listening, oral and written comprehension in Italian. My hope is that my students become more self-aware and more accepting of themselves and of others, other cultures, other ethnicities, and others' stories. Herein lies the extreme value in the sabbatical, with regards to what I will be able to impart to my students.
The time would allow me to create my own oral history, then turning it into a lesson and project in which my students would have a concrete example to follow as they embark on their own oral history experience. In my seventeen years as an Italian teacher, with tremendous passion for the subject and students alike, I have observed that as the students grow and move on to higher pursuits, the primary lesson they take away centers on the importance of Relationship. Relationship with a particular lesson, a particular topic, or a particular project - but also the relationship they have with their peers, which nurture their advancement in the "real world." Many of my students build close relationships with other students in class due to the nature of the course: we communicate often, regarding the day to day, our individual lives, and our personal interests - all in a language that is foreign to most students in the class. This process exposes vulnerabilities: the vulnerability that comes with public speaking, for instance; the vulnerability that lies within self-exposure. By the end of the year, the very thing they saw as a weakness becomes their greatest strength. Self-confidence builds as their skills increase. Connections with others in the class, and more importantly with themselves, begin to form.
The humanizing elements of humility and empathy can be witnessed daily throughout my classes. I believe this to be evident in most language courses - language is a living subject, ever evolving, and used every day to express ourselves. I have the unique opportunity...to welcome students in classes for two or three consecutive years. I have the opportunity to get to know my students for several years as they acquire the Italian language and its culture, and build close relationships with their peers. An oral history project would greatly support the fundamental lesson they learn in relating to others, and would thereby enhance the relationship between the individual to society, to subject matter, and to self.
It would also compliment their work in other disciplines such as history, the humanities, literature, art, technology and so forth. The proposed oral history project for my students would ultimately be a two or three year endeavor stressing the student as researcher, listener, orator, writer, and critical thinker. The sabbatical would allot me the time to work on my own oral history project where I too would develop a closer relationship with my own family, society, history, and to myself. Time would allow for the growth of this project, wherein the practical details of how to integrate this personal journey into my professional life, will become clearer, more focused, and more centralized. The end result will allow my students to personalize their acquisition of the language, and gain a greater sense of self-identity through their academic journey…
The overall context of these interviews will be World War II, with a central focus on a pivotal date: July 7, 1943. It was on this date that my grandmother lost her own grandmother, as well as her sister and aunt, due to a faulty explosive sitting silently in an abandoned building that stood on the corner of their street. This one tragic event changed and shaped the lives of each of the women on my maternal side – affecting those that had first-hand experience of the event, as well as those that were affected by its story. My grandmother’s perspective was and is different from that of her older sister (my great-aunt), and from that of my own mother in many ways - yet the same event has touched all of their lives.
I began to think about the concept of story-telling in general. In particular, how people sharing the same event have different perspectives, memories, and modes of telling a story. This led me to begin a correspondence with the Italian historian, Alessandro Portelli. Alessandro Portelli is known for his work on subjective memory, identity, and the construction of history. He is especially known in the United States for his oral history project entitled, They Say in Harlan County. The project consisted of interviews concerning socioeconomic conditions, customs, labor, and race in the Appalachian region of Kentucky. Professor Portelli and I have briefly corresponded via email, and I expressed my excitement about the possibility of taking a sabbatical in order to formulate an oral history project. We hope to continue our correspondence, and I have asked him if he might graciously become a part of my project, should I be granted this sabbatical, which would lead me to interview Professor Portelli in Rome.
As a result, I will use the research found in my own project and present it to my students as an example for their own oral history project. As the interviews are collected and research conducted, I plan on designing an outline to a deeply enriching two to three year project that my students would embark upon in hopes that they may feel a stronger connection to their own personal history, to the subject of Italian, and to others. The project I envision will allow my students to use the target language in a more practical and meaningful way - for its everyday use rather than in a compartmentalized textbook method…Because these projects will evolve over the course of two to three years, the students' knowledge, vocabulary and overall acquisition of the language will increase tremendously…
…As the student researcher utilizes critical thinking, and thoughtful speech and writing, while focusing on specific interview questions, he/she will connect to other individuals as well as to a specific story, in very unique and personal ways. History and, more specifically, Italian history is no longer seen just as an objective subject matter; one begins to understand the past in much more personalized ways, causing a great connection to self and to the community at large.
My hope is that this oral history project becomes a vehicle for my students to see the deeper academic value of learning a foreign language--choosing a topic that is purposefully meaningful to them and allowing for its creation, over a span of several years, while acquiring and strengthening their language skills…
…they [the students] will [also] see the relationship, and connections with self, with another person, and with the community, but also the relationship that exists between other courses they study, within other academic disciplines.
Creating an oral history project will serve to strengthen listening, as well as oral and written skills in the Italian language, which will undoubtedly translate to all other courses the students study. It allows for my students to use Italian in a more meaningful way, which in turn increases the authenticity of learning. Oral history can provide a very visceral sense of the past and can preserve it in such a way that it isn't just a meaningless sequence of anonymous names and dates, but rather as something that happened to and because of real people like them. Students will begin to see the story, the history, and the chosen topic in brand new and exciting ways - and they will in turn use the Italian language in a much more authentic manner. Creating an oral history promotes self-reflection and pushes students to find their unique voice in the story telling, and their individualities will emerge. It invites inquiry and supports an interactive, communicative learning environment in and out of the Italian classroom. Oral history allows students to connect with the presence of living, breathing human beings rather than with the Internet, their iPhones, video games, etc. Technology is used simply as a tool, and what are developed instead are a relationship of trust and honesty with the persons interviewed and their story.
----------------------
I had written this sabbatical proposal sometime in December of 2014. I am very grateful to have been granted the sabbatical for the 2015-16 academic year and extremely excited to have embarked and continue to do work on this project. I am also so thankful and feel so fortunate to have come to know these women and to have heard their stories--grazie infinite. The project is a process and a work in progress and it has changed slightly along the way---I had an opportunity to interview women that were not of Italian origin with their own unique WWII experiences-- I began interviewing some women in July, 2015 while in the States before going to Italy and I also had an opportunity to interview a friend's grandmother which brought me to the south of France. So I decided to tweak the project and share these other women's stories instead of solely concentrating on the women in my family and/or just Italian women.
I am concentrating on a group of women that some historians call the Silent Generation--and I like the irony of that title as these women tell their stories of WWII survival. I decided to interview only women that were of non-Jewish origin, foreign born and not living in the USA during WWII--not to down-play the importance of all the other women's stories, which should be continuously told and not forgotten but I wanted to get the stories that hadn't been heard as often; stories of every day civilian women and what they endured. The interviews have been fascinating and I believe we have so much to learn from this generation of women.
I will most definitely be adding my family's interviews into the project; after all, it was my grandmother, Grazia, and her story that was the true catalyst for this whole endeavor. Yet, in all honesty, the stories told by the women in my family are personal, personal to me and I believe have great personal value and lesson. I want to keep the bulk of their interviews and hope to share their stories in a different way. I am hoping to write them all down, possibly into a book, which I hope to be working on apart from this current project—it’s all a process.
I have also decided to keep the number of interviews I share on this site at seven--in honor of Concetta's age [see the Seven Women Speak page]. The number seven, however, seemed to come up in many ways along the process and I later discovered that the number seven has many cultural, religious and spiritual meanings. The meaning that struck me the most was that of ‘completeness’ and ‘connectedness’. These meanings fit with the objective of this project and of The Story of Silence. I am hoping to eventually grow The Story of Silence where there are many stories—not solely the stories of seven women but your story or that of your own family member’s; and not only about WWII but a story that moved you, that you want to share, that you don’t want to forget or that has an important value or lesson. A story that inspires, motivates, or allows others to feel a completeness, to feel a connectedness to others and self.
My hope is that these seven women do not solely serve as an example to a proposed sabbatical project but also ignite reflection, introspection, and growth where these women’s strength, resilience and over-all experiences allow us to remember and look more closely at our own lives, and feel more connected and complete in a world that sometimes seems so far from it.
As the project and site progresses, my hope is that teachers can use the site in their own classrooms, with their own students and possibly share and add their own lessons and stories onto this site. I will be adding a lesson plan page and lesson plans based on my own oral history project and some plans based on the recordings--lesson plans that can be used crossed-divisionally in many academic subjects…Foreign Languages, English, History, Sociology/Psychology, etc.
If you are interested in learning more about the process and progress of this project read the sabbatical logs page and/or contact me. I hope you enjoy the site. I hope it inspires you to tell your own story and, more importantly, I hope you learn something new about a time in history, about a generation, about another and about yourself. Buon divertimento! Have fun!
I’ve included part of my sabbatical proposal if you’re interested in knowing more about The Story of Silence and how it came about. My proposed sabbatical idea has changed slightly but it’s core, its heart has remained the same…here is an excerpt of my proposal…
---------------------
Truly, the primary motive for requesting a sabbatical leave is time. A sabbatical leave would grant me the time to continue research begun almost five years ago—research that consisted of personal interviews of all of the women on the maternal side of my family. Women like my 89-year-old great aunt, and my 83-year-old grandmother who has lived through numerous tragedies of World War II in a small town of Sicily, in Italy. These personal interviews also extended to my aunts and my mother, all of whom immigrated to the United States in the 1960’s and returned to their home country 20 years later.
In every interview I began seeing common threads — resilience, perseverance, strength of character, an exceptional belief in family, hard-work, empathy, compassion, and love of one self that translated to love of others. This thread was the catalyst in seeing the possibility of writing/transcribing all of these interviews into a book or, as I now see fit, into an oral history. This work opened me to self-reflection, a feeling of inclusion, a personal connection to history, valuable inter-personal skills, while strengthening my listening, oral and written skills as well. It opened my eyes to the tremendous pride I feel in my ethnicity, allowing me to embrace it whole- heartedly and see the value in the differences and similarities I have with others. It fostered an open-ness to all ethnicities, races and cultures. All of these elements constitute one of the greatest gifts I have received in life.
As a[n] [Italian] teacher, I feel it is not enough to simply teach the language from textbook drills and rote exercises; I pride myself in instilling a sense of inclusion, a personal connection to the material and to others, which in turn allows for self reflection. I foster inter-personal skills in order to strengthen their listening, oral and written comprehension in Italian. My hope is that my students become more self-aware and more accepting of themselves and of others, other cultures, other ethnicities, and others' stories. Herein lies the extreme value in the sabbatical, with regards to what I will be able to impart to my students.
The time would allow me to create my own oral history, then turning it into a lesson and project in which my students would have a concrete example to follow as they embark on their own oral history experience. In my seventeen years as an Italian teacher, with tremendous passion for the subject and students alike, I have observed that as the students grow and move on to higher pursuits, the primary lesson they take away centers on the importance of Relationship. Relationship with a particular lesson, a particular topic, or a particular project - but also the relationship they have with their peers, which nurture their advancement in the "real world." Many of my students build close relationships with other students in class due to the nature of the course: we communicate often, regarding the day to day, our individual lives, and our personal interests - all in a language that is foreign to most students in the class. This process exposes vulnerabilities: the vulnerability that comes with public speaking, for instance; the vulnerability that lies within self-exposure. By the end of the year, the very thing they saw as a weakness becomes their greatest strength. Self-confidence builds as their skills increase. Connections with others in the class, and more importantly with themselves, begin to form.
The humanizing elements of humility and empathy can be witnessed daily throughout my classes. I believe this to be evident in most language courses - language is a living subject, ever evolving, and used every day to express ourselves. I have the unique opportunity...to welcome students in classes for two or three consecutive years. I have the opportunity to get to know my students for several years as they acquire the Italian language and its culture, and build close relationships with their peers. An oral history project would greatly support the fundamental lesson they learn in relating to others, and would thereby enhance the relationship between the individual to society, to subject matter, and to self.
It would also compliment their work in other disciplines such as history, the humanities, literature, art, technology and so forth. The proposed oral history project for my students would ultimately be a two or three year endeavor stressing the student as researcher, listener, orator, writer, and critical thinker. The sabbatical would allot me the time to work on my own oral history project where I too would develop a closer relationship with my own family, society, history, and to myself. Time would allow for the growth of this project, wherein the practical details of how to integrate this personal journey into my professional life, will become clearer, more focused, and more centralized. The end result will allow my students to personalize their acquisition of the language, and gain a greater sense of self-identity through their academic journey…
The overall context of these interviews will be World War II, with a central focus on a pivotal date: July 7, 1943. It was on this date that my grandmother lost her own grandmother, as well as her sister and aunt, due to a faulty explosive sitting silently in an abandoned building that stood on the corner of their street. This one tragic event changed and shaped the lives of each of the women on my maternal side – affecting those that had first-hand experience of the event, as well as those that were affected by its story. My grandmother’s perspective was and is different from that of her older sister (my great-aunt), and from that of my own mother in many ways - yet the same event has touched all of their lives.
I began to think about the concept of story-telling in general. In particular, how people sharing the same event have different perspectives, memories, and modes of telling a story. This led me to begin a correspondence with the Italian historian, Alessandro Portelli. Alessandro Portelli is known for his work on subjective memory, identity, and the construction of history. He is especially known in the United States for his oral history project entitled, They Say in Harlan County. The project consisted of interviews concerning socioeconomic conditions, customs, labor, and race in the Appalachian region of Kentucky. Professor Portelli and I have briefly corresponded via email, and I expressed my excitement about the possibility of taking a sabbatical in order to formulate an oral history project. We hope to continue our correspondence, and I have asked him if he might graciously become a part of my project, should I be granted this sabbatical, which would lead me to interview Professor Portelli in Rome.
As a result, I will use the research found in my own project and present it to my students as an example for their own oral history project. As the interviews are collected and research conducted, I plan on designing an outline to a deeply enriching two to three year project that my students would embark upon in hopes that they may feel a stronger connection to their own personal history, to the subject of Italian, and to others. The project I envision will allow my students to use the target language in a more practical and meaningful way - for its everyday use rather than in a compartmentalized textbook method…Because these projects will evolve over the course of two to three years, the students' knowledge, vocabulary and overall acquisition of the language will increase tremendously…
…As the student researcher utilizes critical thinking, and thoughtful speech and writing, while focusing on specific interview questions, he/she will connect to other individuals as well as to a specific story, in very unique and personal ways. History and, more specifically, Italian history is no longer seen just as an objective subject matter; one begins to understand the past in much more personalized ways, causing a great connection to self and to the community at large.
My hope is that this oral history project becomes a vehicle for my students to see the deeper academic value of learning a foreign language--choosing a topic that is purposefully meaningful to them and allowing for its creation, over a span of several years, while acquiring and strengthening their language skills…
…they [the students] will [also] see the relationship, and connections with self, with another person, and with the community, but also the relationship that exists between other courses they study, within other academic disciplines.
Creating an oral history project will serve to strengthen listening, as well as oral and written skills in the Italian language, which will undoubtedly translate to all other courses the students study. It allows for my students to use Italian in a more meaningful way, which in turn increases the authenticity of learning. Oral history can provide a very visceral sense of the past and can preserve it in such a way that it isn't just a meaningless sequence of anonymous names and dates, but rather as something that happened to and because of real people like them. Students will begin to see the story, the history, and the chosen topic in brand new and exciting ways - and they will in turn use the Italian language in a much more authentic manner. Creating an oral history promotes self-reflection and pushes students to find their unique voice in the story telling, and their individualities will emerge. It invites inquiry and supports an interactive, communicative learning environment in and out of the Italian classroom. Oral history allows students to connect with the presence of living, breathing human beings rather than with the Internet, their iPhones, video games, etc. Technology is used simply as a tool, and what are developed instead are a relationship of trust and honesty with the persons interviewed and their story.
----------------------
I had written this sabbatical proposal sometime in December of 2014. I am very grateful to have been granted the sabbatical for the 2015-16 academic year and extremely excited to have embarked and continue to do work on this project. I am also so thankful and feel so fortunate to have come to know these women and to have heard their stories--grazie infinite. The project is a process and a work in progress and it has changed slightly along the way---I had an opportunity to interview women that were not of Italian origin with their own unique WWII experiences-- I began interviewing some women in July, 2015 while in the States before going to Italy and I also had an opportunity to interview a friend's grandmother which brought me to the south of France. So I decided to tweak the project and share these other women's stories instead of solely concentrating on the women in my family and/or just Italian women.
I am concentrating on a group of women that some historians call the Silent Generation--and I like the irony of that title as these women tell their stories of WWII survival. I decided to interview only women that were of non-Jewish origin, foreign born and not living in the USA during WWII--not to down-play the importance of all the other women's stories, which should be continuously told and not forgotten but I wanted to get the stories that hadn't been heard as often; stories of every day civilian women and what they endured. The interviews have been fascinating and I believe we have so much to learn from this generation of women.
I will most definitely be adding my family's interviews into the project; after all, it was my grandmother, Grazia, and her story that was the true catalyst for this whole endeavor. Yet, in all honesty, the stories told by the women in my family are personal, personal to me and I believe have great personal value and lesson. I want to keep the bulk of their interviews and hope to share their stories in a different way. I am hoping to write them all down, possibly into a book, which I hope to be working on apart from this current project—it’s all a process.
I have also decided to keep the number of interviews I share on this site at seven--in honor of Concetta's age [see the Seven Women Speak page]. The number seven, however, seemed to come up in many ways along the process and I later discovered that the number seven has many cultural, religious and spiritual meanings. The meaning that struck me the most was that of ‘completeness’ and ‘connectedness’. These meanings fit with the objective of this project and of The Story of Silence. I am hoping to eventually grow The Story of Silence where there are many stories—not solely the stories of seven women but your story or that of your own family member’s; and not only about WWII but a story that moved you, that you want to share, that you don’t want to forget or that has an important value or lesson. A story that inspires, motivates, or allows others to feel a completeness, to feel a connectedness to others and self.
My hope is that these seven women do not solely serve as an example to a proposed sabbatical project but also ignite reflection, introspection, and growth where these women’s strength, resilience and over-all experiences allow us to remember and look more closely at our own lives, and feel more connected and complete in a world that sometimes seems so far from it.
As the project and site progresses, my hope is that teachers can use the site in their own classrooms, with their own students and possibly share and add their own lessons and stories onto this site. I will be adding a lesson plan page and lesson plans based on my own oral history project and some plans based on the recordings--lesson plans that can be used crossed-divisionally in many academic subjects…Foreign Languages, English, History, Sociology/Psychology, etc.
If you are interested in learning more about the process and progress of this project read the sabbatical logs page and/or contact me. I hope you enjoy the site. I hope it inspires you to tell your own story and, more importantly, I hope you learn something new about a time in history, about a generation, about another and about yourself. Buon divertimento! Have fun!