PROFILES in EDUCATION

Candace Braun

Grazia Agrusti-Taha

Name: Grazia Agrusti-Taha
School: Princeton High School
Years Taught: 18 years
Subject/Grade Taught: Italian, ninth through twelfth grade
Education: four-year degree in comparative literature and philosophy,
University of Bari, Italy; teaching certification courses from Caldwell College, N.J.
Most Memorable Book: Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Person You Admire: "My mother, for her endless patience, goodness, and optimism in life."

For many educators, the best subject to teach is the one you know the best. For Grazia Agrusti-Taha, that subject is Italian.

A native speaker, Ms. Agrusti-Taha was born in Italy, and spent her entire childhood and young adult life living there before moving to the States. This has helped her bring a passion to her Italian classes that she wouldn't have otherwise.

"Being a native, I feel very passionate about who I am, my country of origin, the beautiful language, and the rich culture," she said.

Ms. Agrusti-Taha was first inspired to travel outside of Italy by her elementary school teacher in her hometown of Alberobello, Italy. Attending grade school in the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was taught by the same teacher for five consecutive years, as was the custom at that time. She said that the experience was a wonderful way to bond with her teacher, the person who first inspired her to become an educator. The teacher also inspired Ms. Agrusti-Taha to be curious about other cultures of the world.

"She instilled in me the love of travel and the curiosity to learn about the different people of the world," she said.

For a time, Ms. Agrusti-Taha considered becoming an ethnologist, but later decided it would be more fun to teach in another country about her own culture. Her journey to the U.S. began after she graduated from the University of Bari in southern Italy with a degree in literature and philosophy. It was at this time she first came to America to visit relatives in northern New Jersey.

After a brief stay of three months, she went back to Europe and visited relatives in Luxembourg, France, and Switzerland. Deciding she wanted to come back to the States again, she reapplied for a visa, and returned to take classes at Caldwell College. Along with learning the English language in a formal setting, she took classes in Spanish and German, and received certification to teach high school French and Italian.

After a year of working at various jobs that came her way, Ms. Agrusti-Taha was hired as a part-time Italian teacher at Princeton High School. Soon after, she was asked to teach French classes, as well. Now, the educator teaches a full course load of Italian classes to freshman through seniors.

Over the years she has also taught language classes at the Princeton Adult School, as well as Mercer County Community College.

Subhead: Teaching Methods

Growing up in a different generation in a foreign country, Ms. Agrusti-Taha considers herself a rather traditional teacher.

"I come from the old school and the old country, and I learned that the basics are as important as anything else," she said. "You need foundations to build on when learning a [foreign] language."

The Italian teacher tries to get her students to not only learn the language, but to see how it is used on a day-to-day basis. One project she has her classes participate in each year is planning out a trip to Italy, creating an itinerary, searching for hotels, and making all the necessary arrangements to go abroad.

At the end of the school year some students are able to use these skills, when Ms. Agrusti-Taha invites a group of her students to travel to Italy with her and her fellow Latin teacher, Kathy Lewis. Each year the group explores a different part of the country, as every region has something special to offer, she said.

Along with her class trips, Ms. Agrusti-Taha visits Italy at least twice a year with her husband, Nabil Taha, a retired history teacher at Princeton High. She goes back to see her family and her home country, as well as to gather information to use in the classroom.

"I go back not only to recharge the battery, but to gather teaching materials and to keep current...on the old continent," she said.

Ms. Agrusti-Taha says she likes to teach her students not only about Italy's rich history, but also about the way it functions in today's society.

Subhead: Students Today

After teaching for almost two decades, the Italian teacher says she has seen drastic changes in the ways she is able to reach her students in the classroom. As visual media has changed, so has the attention span of her students. Keeping them interested in the subject is much more difficult now, she said.

"[Teachers] have a harder task, in my opinion," said Ms. Agrusti-Taha. "We must be much more creative because students must be bombarded with visuals...It's more difficult to have them focus and to really capture their attention."

The Italian teacher believes that making connections between different subjects could help the process of learning.

"We need to have a broader view of learning a body of knowledge, allowing us to make learning much more applicable and relevant to our daily lives," she said.

As most of her own education in Italy was based on theory, rather than relevance, Ms. Agrusti-Taha said she can see how the U.S. has a better understanding of the way the human mind takes in information; however there is still room for improvement.

"We need to teach kids to analyze, think critically, and make decisions," she said.

However, despite the many obstacles Ms. Agrusti-Taha faces in the classroom, she has been able to touch the lives of many of her students over the years. When students come back and tell her that they have chosen to study Italian in college because they have developed their own passion for the language, or when students decide to actually move to Italy because of what she has taught them about the country, Ms. Agrusti-Taha can feel that she has made a difference in their lives.

"When [students] not only appreciate it, but live it...Those are the memories that I treasure," she said.