A Note on my Experience with the Cortona Program
My name is Valentina Galvani and I am an Associate Professor with the Department of Economics, at UoA. I am writing this piece to share with the fans of the Econ department about my teaching experience in Cortona, Tuscany, Italy. You might not know it, but the Faculty of Arts has a campus in Italy, in which UofA offers courses (for credit) taught (in English) to UofA students by UofA professors or affiliated researchers. I was in Cortona to teach for the Spring term of 2016. The course is concentrated in 4 weeks, so me and the students were there for the entire month of May.
As I left Canada, at the end of the Winter term, I was expecting that teaching was going to be the drag of my UofA-in-Italy experience. I was envisioning good pasta meals, but held low expectations on the course I was going to teach.
I am happy to declare that I was dead wrong (excellent pasta meals notwithstanding). In fact, it turned out that teaching was the highlight of my Cortona experience. Better still: the students I taught to were the highlight: Seeing them fully enjoy this unique experience constitutes my best memory of Cortona.
From an instructor's perspective, the extraordinary advantage of the Cortona program is that one teaches about a topic (half of my course went to cover Renaissance banking in Tuscany) while being immersed in related culture. As a result, course material becomes easy to communicate. On their part, students enjoyed reading their surrounding using their newly learnt knowledge as an interpretative key. I saw them building personal and deep connections between what they learnt in class and what they observed in their everyday life in Cortona, and during the field trips. We went to four field trips (to Perugia, Siena, and Florence), and they were all a success, allowing us to tide into the sightseeing the concepts we had reviewed during the lectures.
Let me explain in which sense I think the interaction with my students was the highlight of the trip by using an analogy. To me, lecturing is like dancing: it is essentially bi-directional. Lecturing may turn into an excruciatingly boring and embarrassing experience, or yield moments of pure joy. During the lecture, the instructor must lead the students of course, but crucially she must also allow herself to be lead by students' feedback. The feedback loop occurs even abstracting from verbal communication (e.g., questions). Students' bodies talk: slouching or alert, defensively cross-armed and cross-legged, or relaxed and at ease. Further, students' faces cannot hide boredom, or, much less frequently, enthusiasm. Sudden puzzled looks tell the instructor that she has to clarify a concept, shifty eyes make for somebody who is lost.
Well, if lecturing is a dance, then my Cortona course felt, to me, like the top performance of an imaginary TV series "So you think you can teach". Class dynamics were graceful, thoroughly enjoyable, and totally fulfilling. Student were learning AND enjoying themselves at the same time, which is the jackpot of good teaching.
Yes, of course, it was hard work. I found myself up to ungodly hours to prepare for the field trips, or scramming to summarize into a three-hour lecture (with NO math or formal model whatsoever) the analysis of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. But I did all this prep work gingerly, without feeling it like a burden. I simply wanted to give the student the best I could, because they were transforming it into something that, to my eyes, was even better: shared knowledge. In short, class dynamics were at their absolute best, because students were at their absolute best. That was the effect of this excellent study abroad program.
I recall thinking, during lectures, that the classroom was filled with the tic-tac of brains processing the lecture content at high speed. Intellectually stimulating of course. But I also felt in the air the joy of learning, the enjoyment of making new intellectual discoveries together. Such a teaching experience is exhilarant for any instructor (yes, even for a cold hearted economist).
In short, I can confidently say that teaching in Cortona was one of the most rewarding experience of my professional life (and I am not a spring chick). Thanks to the UofA students. And thanks to all the people who made the program possible. I owe them a wonderful time of my professional life. I wish to end this piece with a strong recommendation, to students and instructors alike, to try the Cortona program. It is a wonderful perk of this University. Let's take advantage of it!
Valentina Galvani
Full disclosure: I am a born and raised Italian. I do like Italy (call it a home-bias) but I have no affiliation with anybody in Tuscany or Cortona. My enthusiasm for the Cortona program has nothing to do with me being Italian. Rather, I am prone to be hypercritical of anybody dealing with Italian stuff (ask me if I like Boston Pizza). What made Cortona special and precious was the interaction with the UofA students. That was priceless (which is something embarrassing for an economist to admit).