Language

When Gianluca Butticè moved from his native Sicily to the U.S., he faced the challenges of learning English and American culture. Surmounting that learning curve inspired him to make the journey easier for others. So after spending the past several years teaching Italian, he is branching out into offering tours of Italy that encompass language and culture in a mutually enhancing way. “I know the doors that are opened when you learn a new language,” he says, explaining that traveling, learning the culture of a country and learning the language can all reinforce each other. Butticè, 41, believes everything he …

At a recent awards banquet, Judie Vitiritti-Lynch was so engaged in talking to her former students that she didn’t hear the emcee announce her name. A colleague prompted her to walk up to the podium, because she had won the Italian Consulate in Chicago’s first-ever Midwest Award for Leadership in the Teaching of the Italian Language and Culture. “I was stunned, because I was up against some very good people, and everyone was so deserving,” recalls Vitiritti-Lynch, who became Addison Trail High School’s first Italian language teacher in the early 1990s and pioneered the program. In her first year, she …

Growing up in an Italian-American family, Kathryn Occhipinti experienced the Italian food, the emphasis on togetherness and the practicing of the Catholic faith. But she felt one piece of her heritage was missing: the language. Her grandparents and parents would converse in Italian, making it even more of a mysterious to her. After completing her medical training, she spent years studying the language, writing books and teaching classes in conversational Italian. She gears her efforts toward adult learners with a desire to travel to Italy. “Today, people are trying to understand where they came from, and the language was really …

  An Italian teacher and administrator in northwest suburban High School District 214, Angela Briguglio Hawkins was known as “the American” when she was growing up in Sicily. That’s because she was born in Oak Park, but her parents decided to move the family back to their native Sicily when Briguglio Hawkins was two-and-a-half years old. They missed their relatives. “I did all my schooling in Italy, up until the equivalent of the first year in high school,” she says. “But then my dad was worried about the lack of economic opportunity in Europe, so my parents moved back to …

  Spending every summer of his childhood in Sicily convinced Antonino Bondi that he wanted a career somehow related to Italy. He never pictured himself as a teacher in those days, but he has realized his dream in a classroom. Bondi, 31, the son of parents who immigrated from Sicily to Chicago in the 1970s, teaches Italian 2, 3 and 4 in northwest suburban Township High School District 214. He starts his day teaching at Rolling Meadows High School, and then travels to Prospect High School in Mount Prospect to teach in the afternoons. For someone who spoke the Sicilian …

Michele Curley’s love of languages and cultures started at age 14. That’s when her grandmother, Filomena Conversano Pesano, who at 17 had left Basilicata and journeyed alone to the United States, decided to take Michele, her five siblings and her parents back to Basilicata. “It was a really transformative experience,” Curley, an Italian teacher at East Leyden High School, says of the month-long visit. They met relatives, took road trips around southern Italy, returned to Basilicata and then went north to Rome, Florence, Pisa and Venice. When they returned to the Chicago area, Curley wanted to take Italian when she …

  Prior to arriving at Highland Park High School two years ago, Maria Barbanente had already blazed a trail where life’s adventures had added depth to her linguistic skills. The daughter of native Italians from the Puglia region, Barbanente had a master’s degree in education, and a certification in Spanish, by the time she arrived in Madrid, Spain to teach English for two years. It was hardly her first time in Europe. “Learning the Italian language and having been fortunate enough to travel to Italy every summer as a child, I was able to further explore the Italian culture and …

The Italian Cultural Center at Casa Italia will once again offer a wide range of Italian classes for both children and adults at sites across the Chicago area. Parents can choose from exploratory classes for 5- to 7-year-olds and beginning, intermediate and advanced classes for children ages 8 to 13. Adult classes range from beginning and intermediate to advanced and advanced conversational. Private lessons for children and adults also are available. (708-345-5933) http://casaitaliachicago.net

  This year marked another great feast in honor of Saint Joseph at Dominican University. Under the supervision of Prof. Tonia Triggiano, students and volunteers fed more than 200 people, raising a record-breaking $1,195, which was gifted to Catholic Charities. Such foods as gelato, fine cheeses, pastas and Italian sweets were donated by local kitchens and eating establishments. None of it would be possible without the collaborative help of the students, faculty, staff and alumni who call themselves “Gli Amici di San Giuseppe.” The Dominican University community played a big role in putting together the table. Michael Meranda, a Dominican …

  At our annual celebration honoring the Italian students inducted into the National Honor Society, “Società Onoraria Italica-Sezione Cristoforo Colombo,” the Prospect High School Italian Program showcased the hard work of students at Prospect High and St. Raymond’s and honored members and organizations in the community who share the passion of Italian with the Italian students at Prospect. The Copernico exchange students from Verona and Prospect teamed up with the SOAR Program at Fairview to send the beloved children’s book character Flat Stanley to Verona over the holidays. The SOAR children were presented with a framed collage of photos of …