While studying abroad in Italy, Jennifer Buono fell in love with the country’s language and culture. That experience eventually led to a career teaching Italian. Today, Buono is entering her 11th year teaching Italian at York Community High School in Elmhurst, but Italian wasn’t the language that first captured her interest. Growing up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, Buono was drawn to languages from a young age. With only Spanish and French offered at her middle school and Glenbard South High School, she chose the latter. “I have always loved languages, and as a young child I was very interested in …

For high school Italian teacher Natalie Del Percio, the language of her ancestors is a bridge that has connected her to her heritage as well as her family throughout the generations and around the world. A dual citizen of Italy and the United States, Del Percio has roots that extend across several regions. Her mother’s family comes from Mazzano Romano, near Rome, and San Giovanni in Fiore, Calabria, while her father’s family is from Volturara Irpina in Campania. Both sides of her family settled in Melrose Park. There, Del Percio’s grandfather opened a plumbing business that her father later took …

For Dr. Veena Carlson, a month-long student exchange trip to Italy as a teenager sparked an interest that eventually launched her career. Today, Carlson is in her 30th year teaching Italian at Dominican University. However, when she first traveled to Italy in 1983, she didn’t speak a word of Italian. Carlson grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, where her parents settled after immigrating to the United States from India in 1965. Although she doesn’t have Italian roots, languages have fascinated her from a young age. “I was always interested in languages,” Carlson says. “Because my parents were immigrants from India, I …

After nearly two decades in the classroom, Laura Calo still speaks about teaching with the same enthusiasm she had as a child pretending to run her own classroom in Italy. Her journey from playing make believe in a small Pugliese town to leading classes in Italian and Spanish in a Chicago suburb has been shaped by the forces of immigration and culture, and a lifelong passion for education. Calo was born in Chicago, but when she was only a year and a half old, her family moved back to their hometown of Mola di Bari. She spent the next nine …

  Shawna Hennessey has been an Italian instructor at Fenwick High School for 19 years. Affectionately referred to as “Prof” by her students, she teaches with genuine enthusiasm and commitment. But if you had asked her two decades ago where she’d be today, she never would have imagined the role she’s come to love so deeply. Hennessey was born in Minneapolis but grew up in Western Springs, a southwest suburb of Chicago. Though her father is mostly of Irish descent, her mother traces her roots to Amaseno, a small town in the Lazio region of Italy. Hennessey’s maternal grandparents immigrated …