BRISBANE - Mackay is a small town in Queensland with beautiful beaches and a significant sugarcane industry, in which many Italians were traditionally employed after migrating to Australia post WWII.
As a result, they founded a large and vibrant community.
Pozza is one of the many descendants of those migrants, whose family left Veneto after the war. He was born and raised in Mackay and has been working as a teacher for 22 years, but only as an Italian teacher since 2020. The switch happened after he convinced his principal at Mackay State High School to introduce Italian as a subject. Pozza would become the school’s language coordinator, which also offers German.
“The kids understand the importance of studying a second language, but they choose to study it mainly because they find the Italian program enjoyable and fun,” explains Pozza.
He also points out that the school is rigorous in its adherence to the Australian curriculum, partly because the kids are highly motivated, so much so that most of them go above and beyond the compulsory work.
Pozza also takes students on field trips, orchestrates projects and facilitates meetings with young Italians from their community, because, as he points out, “the key is to keep their interest alive”.
Recently, for example, the students finished a project that involved organising an event inside Mackay’s Great Barrier Reef Arena, a newly built stadium.
The students had to decide what kind of event to organise - sports, cultural or any other kind - and take care of all the details related to the success of the event up to the final presentation to their peers.
Students of Mackay State High School during their visit to the Great Barrier Reef Arena
Creative projects are always alternated with grammar and vocabulary building.
“In class with students in Year 9 and 10, I always speak Italian, and we often pause to look at similarities with English or even Latin words to understand their origin,” he explains.
“As far as culture is concerned, I try to relate it to their everyday life.
“We don’t talk so much about Italy, but about Italian culture here in Australia and in our community in particular.”
Mackay State High School recently hosted an Italian student, an experience Pozza would like Italian schools to reciprocate for his boys through an exchange program.
In the ongoing quest to pique the boys’ interest, the group of Italian teachers have also organised upcoming assessments.
The first takes its cue from one of Pozza’s passions, the Italian radio show he hosts called Ma che dici, on a local Mackay station, 4CRM.
As the teacher does during the weekly episode conducted with his brother, the students will also have to try to teach a few phrases, common expressions, grammatical concepts or a bit of culture to hypothetical listeners.
“We will also ask students to write an article, using just one issue of In Classe as a starting point,” adds Pozza.
He points out that the beauty of teaching a language is also about finding engaging resources, using many different and already available sources, including videos, audio and written texts.
“The study of languages,” the teacher points out, “is particularly challenging”.
“Because when you study a language, you’re always learning, even when you make mistakes, and that’s something that doesn’t happen for other subjects.”
