LDMS Students ‘Zoomed,” Studied With Youths In Italy
Lylburn Downing Middle school eighth-graders had the opportunity to make some new friends – with students in Italy.
They were able to participate in a zoom call with students of Dante Alighieri Middle School in Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy, in May.
The call was the culminating event of the 2025 Global Citizenship Education Project organized through the Washington and Lee University spring term class of Drs. Haley Sigler and Eric Moffa.
Sigler and Moffa had traveled to Italy with 17 W&L students on April 27. After spending several days in Rome, they arrived in Castiglion Fiorentino, a small, walled town in Tuscany.
Over the next weeks, the W&L students worked as guest teachers in the Dante Alighieri English classes, creating lessons on the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Meanwhile, at LDMS, guest teacher Amanda Conway was presenting parallel lessons on the Sustainable Development Goals to eighth-graders in Rebecca Miller’s World Geography classes.
Throughout the project, students in both schools were creating content about the goals and themselves and sharing with their counterparts in the other school.
Conway said the LDMS students really enjoyed discovering similarities and differences with the Italian middle-schoolers. Many of them said, “They are just like us!”
