The history of Jona, an alumna from Teach For Italy

Born in Albania and raised in Italy, Jona graduated in Foreign  Languages at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. After a rich  international experience in the education sector, she was deeply  aware of the need for education to overcome inequalities and in Teach For Italy she found the opportunity  to turn this vision into a concrete personal commitment. In the two years of the  Fellowship, Jona taught English in a highly  disadvantaged vocational school in the suburbs of Turin.

Today, she is one of the first Teach For Italy alumni and she has  passed the state exam to become a tenured teacher, with her  long-term goal to become a school principal. Since leaving the  Fellowship, she gained policy experience working as a researcher at Fondazione Agnelli and has now joined Teach For Italy’s team as a Programme Manager.

I have a migratory background; my parents are Albanian and I  was born in Albania. They emigrated to Italy in the mid-’90s after  the unrest following the fall of the communist regime. They had  both been able to study and live in relative comfort, but that was  not enough for them. They wanted to ensure that my siblings and I had the chance to grow, to become adults in an environment  that would give us more freedom and security. In Italy, their  qualifications were not recognised. They accepted menial jobs  but always insisted on the importance of education as the only  means for emancipation for the two of us.

I have always been clear about this factor in my life. I knew that it was only through school that I could achieve what I wanted and I  have always been very committed to this. The turning point came through my Erasmus experience at Cambridge University.

This unique chance led me to think about the privilege of  educational environments of “excellence”. For every person of  “excellence”, how many are excluded? And what do we mean by  “excellence”? It is often just confirmation of the vantage point  from where you start. In that crucial year, I decided that I wanted  to dedicate my life to something that could help people who are  born in circumstances similar to mine – or those even more  disadvantaged – as a teacher helping to change their path which  is too often pre-determined by the condition in which they were  born and live. Teach For Italy has given me the opportunity to be  that teacher for girls and boys who, even in their wildest dreams,  cannot image that they will be able to change their social and  economic status.