La nostra scuola, da sempre attenta alle tematiche ambientali, ha aderito con entusiasmo al progetto “IH Young Environmentalist” promosso da International House World con lo scopo di aumentare la consapevolezza sulle questioni ambientali attraverso contenuti creati da studenti e rivolti ai loro coetanei in tutto il mondo.
Qui di seguito trovate le riflessioni di Pietro, un nostro promettente studente di inglese, sulla sua partecipazione al progetto.
Buona lettura!
My experience of the project
Initial fears
On the 28th of November 2020 I took part for the first time to the IH Young Environmentalists project, something that I had never heard before of a couple of weeks prior to then but that had piqued my curiosity from the first time it was brought up, a project involving, not just random people, but IH students from other countries, people of my level having IH lessons every week as I do, so similar but so different at the same time. I was just so afraid that I would’ve ended up in something mostly directed to kids or that simply would’ve been full of them and the premise of a project “about the environment” didn’t help at all my initial stress, “I mean that’s the premise that we got for projects in elementary school!” I kept thinking “I’m surely going to end up in some Zoom call full of screaming children sitting at the computer with their parents that just want to keep them busy for some hours, I’m 17, I’m the oldest even in my IH Class, I’m going to stand out like dust on black furniture and there’s no way I’m going to enjoy this!” I repeated to myself, and, writing this in March 2021 I can tell you: oh boy was I wrong.
Genuine communication
The IH YE Project surprised me, and it did it in the greatest way possible: it surprised me for the best, not only by revealing all of my fears as silly and just plain no sense in many cases but by actually making me enjoy meetings over Zoom more than I ever did since the start of this whole pandemic a year ago, it showed me a fun and entertaining way to use my English skills both in writing and speaking for something more than a “Now make conversation with your partner about…” but for something that felt practical, for something that felt… real. As a teenager, I know what you may be thinking: “yeah you know that this is not the only way to do something like this and achieve the experience that you just explained in 2021, right? A conversation with a mother-tongue English speaker woooow y’all are reeaaally breaking new grounds uh” and it’s something normal to think, as I, myself in the first place, thought the same kind of things, since over social media I happen to have friends from Brazil to Russia to who I text to on an almost daily basis, play video-games with and sometimes just phone-call for hours I really thought I wasn’t going to have that much of an astonishing experience anyway for my English level, and, once again I can say: oh boy was I so wrong.
Tangible results
Don’t even get me started on how much did my English conversation skills improved during the 2 months of the activity, because Yes, even as an almost 18 year old, even as an IH student that is going to do the FIRST CERTIFICATE exam in the span of a year by now and even as an high schooler I actually felt my speaking abilities improving exponentially. You really have no idea how much can a project like this one do to you and to your IH level, getting down to actually plan something with a bunch of strangers from other countries truly is another thing, struggling for so many meetings to even understand the words of that one team-mate of your team with the weirdest accent, getting to know so many new people coming from places that always seemed so far away, places that you just saw in movies before then and getting to discover that they’re filled with people just like you; and not only having the possibility to organize and work with them but to even ARGUE with them, about your work, about what you’re going to do all together and about what do you, specifically, want to create, by supporting your ideas and convincing the others that they are as good as you see them, all of this, all of this with only 2 things: your voice and your English skills.
In conclusion
Participating to the first edition of the International House Young Environmentalists project was truly a magical experience that I didn’t regret for a single moment, the age was never a problem for anybody and I ended up surrounded by people that not only were compatible with me but that improved me in every way possible, we got along so well that, after the great words of our Team Coordinator Palmina La Rosa, when the last meeting came to its end we started to text on our Whatsapp group-chat more than we ever did and nowadays we’re still meeting up over Zoom calls at the same time and day of the week as we did during the times of the activity, with the only differences that: now we don’t have to finish a work for any deadline and… now we’re friends.
Thank you really for your attention and I hope you’re gonna be one of my team-mates for the next edition of the Young Environmentalists project!
Pietro Laporta, Teens Upper-Intermediate 2A, IH San Donato, Italy