As an Italian teacher at Centro Scuola, Carmela La Rosa likes to get creative. “I really enjoy incorporating aspects not only about the country but about the culture and the music because it’s just so rich,” says La Rosa, who teaches at Centro Scuola on the weekends. “I like incorporating that while they’re learning about vocabulary and literary forms and all that.”

By blending the two, the students don’t realize how much they’re learning, adds 25-year-old La Rosa, who has taught Italian at Centro Scuola for the past six years. Her students range from as young as two years old to adult learners.

In her experience, she finds the most challenging parts of learning Italian for English speakers to include understanding the difference between feminine and masculine, along with recognizing that plurals don’t end with the letter “s” and that verbs have many different tenses.

But once you know Italian, it opens to the door to so many other romance languages, such as French, Spanish and Poruguese, says La Rosa, who teaches French for the Toronto Catholic District School Board full-time.

“It’s like math, once you know the equation, it helps you out with everything else. I think it’s just a matter of teaching the English students the equation they need to know and then from there they can move forward.”

In Canada, there are lots of people of Italian origin who understand the language perfectly, along with a dialect or two, she says.

“The only problem is when they come and speak to you, they have difficulty expressing themselves because all they had to do was understand.”

To counter the common fear of making mistakes in this situation, La Rosa does her best to assure students that it’s OK to make mistakes.

“By making mistakes, you’ll understand where you’re going wrong and how you can fix that.”

Growing up, La Rosa spoke Italian with her family at home. She started speaking the Calabrese dialect when she went to Italy at about 14 years old.

“I’m an anomaly when it comes to that as a Canadian-born person of Italian parents,” she says. “Usually the dialect is learned at home but I actually learned Italian first in my house, even though my parents would speak Calabrese to each other.”

Her parents’ rationale was that since they had family in Milan, they wanted to ensure they would all be able to communicate.

La Rosa’s passion for languages — she also speaks French and understands Spanish — has shown her that knowing another language is a benefit.

“The more a student gets involved with the culture and the language of Italian, not only do they become proud of their own heritage…they’ll feel influenced to travel the world, which changes everything.”

As an Italian teacher, she loves continually expanding her culture and knowledge while sharing what she knows with others.

“For me,” says La Rosa, “It’s a treat to teach Italian.”