by George J Elbaum

La Scuola is a private (PreK – 8) educational enterprise based on the concept that the world has changed, and it’s time for education to catch up.  At La Scuola we believe that to shape the future, we must believe that children are innately intelligent and curious. The provocative questions they ask ignite a process of arriving at answers with peers and teachers, not an opportunity for us to tell them the answer.

Founded in 2002, La Scuola International School is an International Baccalaureate (IB) and Italian language immersion school with a mission to inspire brave learners to shape the future. Every day, it is the students at La Scuola who ask provocative questions and lead their learning across languages, across cultures, and across subjects.  The IB program began as an academically challenging program for high school students and has evolved into a curriculum framework used by over 5,000 schools worldwide in PreK-12 that encourages critical and creative thinking, expression of knowledge in various modalities, global perspective, and foreign language acquisition. IB students are known for having a growth mindset, developing strong cognitive skills, high executive function, and are generally psyched to learn new things and solve problems

 To begin the process, children do not need to speak Italian!  We aim for our students to develop being bilingual. By learning English and Italian simultaneously, they develop better attention, decision making, and planning skills than monolingual students.  Italian also  benefits students by imparting an increased appreciation for art, music, food, and history. Speaking another language develops a child’s empathy and connectivity to the world.

My presentation to 50 6th, 7^th and 8^th grade students was organized by Jake Kaplove, Middle School Dean of Students, and my participation was arranged by Morgan Blum Schneider, Director, JFCS Holocaust Center, with support by the Center’s volunteer Jim McGarry.