Rome, a teacher lectures fifth graders in Baroque churches

Are the schools closed? No problem for teacher Francesca Romana Bixio, a drawing teacher at Rome’s Liceo Scientifico Kennedy high school, who together with some colleagues thought of taking the kids to class--in the capital’s churches. After all, schools are closed, but churches have always remained open. So, for one day, the boys of the V A high school, last Friday, therefore, had a walking lesson in the temples of the city where they were able to observe live the Baroque masterpieces they study in books. Among the stops on the itinerary were Bernini’sEcstasy of St. Theresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria, Piazza Navona with its churches, and Sant’Ignazio with its spectacular vault frescoed by Andrea Pozzo.

In fact, this is nothing new for the lecturer: her students are used to educational outings of this kind. Which, however, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, become a welcome and pleasant way to get out of the house and see up close and personal with classmates forced to distance themselves due to distance learning. And in a slightly different way than usual: since, due to spacing and the ban on assemblies, it was not possible to take the entire class around all at once, the pupils were divided into groups that visited churches in Rome in a kind of relay race. “With my pupils, even when I taught in the province, I always organized outings to the city so they could experience firsthand, at the end of the school program, everything they had studied only in books,” Professor Bixio explained to Corriere della Sera. “Last year unfortunately, at the end of the fourth grade, we couldn’t do that because of the emergency. So I thought that, at least this year, we had to invent something to get around the obstacle, and so the idea of the relay came up.”

So we set off at 8:15 a.m., with the children meeting up with Professor Bixio and two other teachers (Laura Bisognero, English teacher, and Elena Sovani, religion teacher) to go around squares and churches. “We took advantage of the Covid emergency problem that did not allow us to organize a classic guided tour. But, the route this way was better,” Professor Bisognero told Voice Book Radio. “It was a relay since the class was divided into five groups of five students in which one of them was in charge of illustrating the masterpieces they encountered. The first group started from Santa Maria del Popolo where the Cerasi Chapel towers with masterpieces by Carracci and Caravaggio. Then they touched on SantIvo alla Sapienza, Piazza Navona and San Carlino alle Quattro Fontane, splendid places of Roman Baroque. Subsequent groups took the same route, but twenty minutes apart from the previous ones, finding the art history teacher to greet them at the beginning of the walk, me halfway through and the religion teacher at the end of the route.”

The children responded enthusiastically to their teachers’ stunt, and now the idea is to replicate. Not only for other classes, but also for other subjects. For example, for a ride between institution buildings for outdoor civics lessons. The idea, in this case, came as the class reached the church of St. Ignatius: in front of the temple, in fact, is the headquarters of the Carabinieri’s Cultural Heritage Protection Command. And since the tour succeeded in uniting docere and delectare, why not?

Image: Bernini’sEcstasy of Saint Theresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria. Ph. Credit

Rome, a teacher lectures fifth graders in Baroque churches

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