Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
On his way to becoming a history teacher, Michael Bodenhagen stumbled onto teaching Italian. Now, he’s found his passion, he says.
Bodenhagen grew up in Homer Glen, Illinois, in a family that was very proud of its Italian heritage, he says. His maternal grandparents moved from Bari to the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, and relatives on his father’s side came from Termini Imerese, Sicily.
“My mom and nonna would speak to each other in Italian, which would be the driving factor in my desire to learn Italian,” he says. “In addition, we would have big family parties with endless amounts of food.”
After graduating from Lockport Township High School, he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in history and minored in Italian.
“Going into college, I was not sure what I wanted to do with my life, so I decided to study what I loved, which was history,” he says. “In my second semester of undergrad, I began to take Italian classes and discovered my second passion.”
He decided to spend a semester abroad studying in Pavia, Italy — which he chose because not as many people speak English there and he wanted to challenge himself, he explains — but the COVID-19 pandemic cut his trip short after just three weeks.
“After leaving Pavia having not improved my Italian very much, I decided to minor in Italian, not really expecting to do anything with it,” he recalls.
On a quest to do something meaningful with his life, Bodenhagen decided to become a history teacher, so he went back to school and got a master’s in secondary education and teaching from Saint Xavier University in Chicago. That’s when his path took a turn, he says.
“In my first semester of grad school, I came across a job opening for an Italian teacher maternity leave position at Wheeling High School. I actually didn’t even realize that teaching Italian was actually a possibility for me,” he says. “I applied for it not expecting anything to come from it. Much to my surprise, one month later I was teaching Italian 1,2,3 and AP.
“This experience really changed my entire path. I enjoyed teaching Italian so much that I decided that I would prefer teaching Italian over history.”
Bodenhagen has been teaching at Lyons Township High School since August 2023. His goal is to get students excited about learning Italian by showing them “all the wonderful cultural aspects of Italy,” he says. “I teach my students about Italian history, soccer, fashion, and of course, food. Including these aspects in class makes things easier when it is time to learn grammar.”
Besides making a difference in his students’ lives, he is also proud to help increase the number of Italian speakers in the community, he says.
The biggest challenge? “Getting the students to be quiet when I need to explain something!”
Bodenhagen also coaches the high school’s freshman boys’ lacrosse team, which boasts a 10-5-1 record last season.
Another passion of Bodenhagen’s is serving on the board of the Will County Historical Society, a research center and museum in Lockport, Illinois, where he started to volunteer his sophomore year in college in an effort to bolster his resume.
“I just walked in one day, not even realizing that they were closed to the public, and asked if I could volunteer,” he recalls. “At first the director had me doing mundane tasks, such as cataloguing and sorting records, but it wasn’t long before I was given bigger responsibilities, such as setting up exhibits and doing historical research.”
He is especially proud of two projects: a “Pre-1860 Will County” exhibit, which was on display for over a year, and a presentation he gave on Potawatomi Chief Shabbona at the 2020 Illinois History Conference, which took place virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aside from teaching, Bodenhagen loves the Grateful Dead and is “pretty good at juggling.” “The only public performance I’ve ever tried is in front of the kids, but they don’t think it’s as cool as I do,” he says.
His hope is to someday get a master’s degree in Italy, so he can spend more time there in the long term.
