Introduction: A Different Way of Teaching
For forty years, from 1970 to 2010, I taught Italian language and culture to Italian students in Düsseldorf, Germany. During those years, I developed an educational conviction that gradually became central to my work: sometimes, teachers learn more about their students when they stop telling them what to write and begin listening to what the students themselves want to say.
I never assigned my students a writing topic simply because it appeared in the curriculum. I wanted them to write because they had something to express, a thought to communicate, a memory to preserve, or an experience they wanted someone else to understand.
My approach was simple, but it required a change in perspective. Instead of always directing the student, I tried to follow the student.
1. When Writing Begins With a Personal Need
Traditional school exercises often begin with an instruction: write about a particular subject, follow a structure, use certain grammatical forms, and produce a text that can be evaluated.
These activities have their place. Students need to learn grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and the conventions of written communication.
However, I wondered whether something important could be lost when every piece of writing began with an assignment.
What happens when students are free to choose what they want to communicate? What can their writing reveal when they are not primarily trying to satisfy the teacher's expectations?
I decided to give my students greater freedom. I did not want writing to become merely an exercise performed for a mark. I wanted it to become an opportunity to express something meaningful.
This did not mean abandoning teaching or correcting errors. It meant reconsidering the order of priorities: first, encourage the desire to communicate; then, help students develop the skills needed to communicate more effectively.
2. The Teacher's Hand Should Sometimes Be Almost Invisible
One of the most important lessons I learned was that a teacher does not always need to be visibly present in every aspect of a student's work.
When students write freely, their texts may contain unexpected ideas, personal observations, unusual associations, and ways of seeing the world that an assigned topic might never have elicited.
The teacher's role is then to observe carefully without immediately imposing an interpretation.
This requires patience. It also requires the ability to distinguish between guiding a student and taking control of the student's expression.
My intention was not to disappear from the educational process. It was to make room for the student's own voice.
The teacher remains responsible for providing guidance, helping students improve their language, and maintaining an appropriate learning environment. But the teacher can also learn from the student, allowing the student's interests and questions to influence the direction of learning.
3. Reading Students' Stories as a Way of Understanding Them
A student's story can be more than a language exercise. It can offer a glimpse into the way that student observes, remembers, imagines, and interprets the world.
When a student chooses the subject, the text may reveal what captures their attention and what they consider worth communicating. Sometimes the most revealing element is not the subject itself but the way the student approaches it.
This observation must be handled responsibly. A story is not a psychological diagnosis, and a teacher should not assume that every fictional episode describes the student's actual life. Nor should students feel obliged to disclose private experiences.
Nevertheless, reading their work carefully can give teachers valuable opportunities to understand their students better.
The educational question changes. Instead of asking only, "Has this student learned the required material?", we can also ask, "What does this student want to communicate, and what can I learn by listening?"
This is particularly important for young people who may find it difficult to express themselves directly in conversation. Writing can offer them another route into communication.
4. From Individual Stories to a Shared Publication
During my years of teaching, I created Ragazzi a Düsseldorf, a student newspaper published every six months in approximately 1,000 printed copies.
The publication gave students an opportunity to see their writing become part of something larger than an individual classroom exercise. Their words could reach readers beyond the immediate relationship between teacher and student.
This experience also suggested an important educational possibility: when students know that their writing may be read by a real audience, writing can acquire a purpose beyond completing an assignment.
A student becomes not only someone who learns to write but also someone who has something to contribute.
A publication of this kind can encourage participation, responsibility, and a sense of belonging. It can also demonstrate that students' thoughts deserve to be taken seriously.
The newspaper was part of my wider attempt to make students active participants in their education rather than merely recipients of instruction.
5. Can Students' Stories Help Us Evaluate Educational Outcomes?
I believe that students' own texts deserve a more important place in the evaluation of educational approaches.
If we want to understand what happens when students are given greater freedom to write, we should examine what they actually produce.
Their stories can be studied for features such as the development of ideas, narrative coherence, vocabulary, linguistic accuracy, originality, and willingness to communicate. With appropriate safeguards, teachers could compare samples of student writing over time and examine whether particular teaching practices are associated with observable changes.
Such an investigation would need a clear methodology. It would require defined criteria, careful selection of texts, respect for students' privacy, and appropriate consideration of other factors that influence learning.
My forty years of teaching provide a basis for reflection and a source of practical questions. They do not, by themselves, constitute a controlled scientific study. I therefore propose this approach as an educational perspective that deserves further investigation, rather than as proof of a universal result.
A useful next step would be to invite teachers and educational researchers to examine collections of student writing and ask what these texts can tell us about motivation, expression, and language development.
The students' work should be at the centre of that inquiry.
6. The Teacher as Listener and Observer
Following the student does not mean that students must discover everything independently or that teachers should stop teaching.
Students need instruction, structure, feedback, and encouragement. They also need adults who can recognize when an exercise is not enough to help them progress.
The difference lies in the relationship between instruction and listening.
A teacher who listens carefully can adapt explanations to students' needs, identify interests that might support learning, and create opportunities for students to develop their own ideas.
This approach may be especially valuable in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms, where students bring different experiences and relationships with language.
My work in Düsseldorf involved Italian language and culture in a German environment. In such a context, language was not simply a school subject. It was also a means through which young people could maintain and express a cultural connection.
Giving students space to write helped me recognize the educational importance of their own perspectives.
Conclusion: Let the Student Show the Way
Looking back on forty years of teaching, I remain convinced that education benefits when teachers are willing to learn from their students.
I never wanted my students to write merely because I had assigned a topic. I wanted them to write because they had something to say.
The distinction may appear small, but it changes the starting point of the educational relationship.
The teacher continues to teach, correct, guide, and encourage. Yet the student is given room to become an active participant whose ideas can influence the learning process.
Perhaps one question deserves a place in every classroom: before deciding what we want students to write, have we given them an opportunity to show us what they want to communicate?
Sometimes, the next step in teaching begins when the teacher learns to follow.
About the Author
Giuseppe Tizza is a retired Italian teacher who taught Italian language and culture in Düsseldorf, Germany, from 1970 to 2010. He created Ragazzi a Düsseldorf, a student newspaper published every six months, and has long been interested in the relationship between language, personal expression, and education.
Further information about his educational work: https://www.atuttascuola.it/giuseppe-tizza