From Food To Fashion, NHS Students

Honor Italian Heritage Month

By Eliza Hallabeck

Signs covered the walls and food spread across tables at the front of Newtown High School’s Lecture Hall Friday, October 16, for the yearly Italian Heritage Day.

Every year since 2002, when the Italian program started at NHS, Italian students have been researching and sharing projects on Italian heritage during the annual event.

“They learn through projects on the Italian culture,” said Laura Bittisti. “It can be cuisine, research on heritage, fashion, sports in Italy, and scientists in Italy.”

She said it gives the students the opportunity to research a topic the students are interested in and then present that topic to the class.

 Each class period had students participate in a T-shirt contest, a fashion show, and eating Italian cuisine prepared by students in Italian I. Along with Ms Battisti, NHS Italian teacher Diana Pistritto oversaw the day’s event.

Ms Battisti said Ms Pistritto, who is relatively new to NHS, has been working hard with the students.

NHS students Andrew Haas and Alicia Carrafiello said the food was delicious.

“Italian food is really good,” said Alicia.

For the day’s T-shirt contest, students put on pr-made handcrafted T-shirts and walked around the Lecture Hall. Winners were judged by the number of people clapping for them.

No matter what area the students choose to research for Italian heritage, all students in the Italian I level had to create a poster and a presentation to be shared with the class. If the students chose to research fashion, the project had to include a fashion show.