The Italian Language Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 TEACHER RECOGNITION AWARDS!
Two outstanding teachers from across the United States have been recognized for their commitment to excellence in the teaching of Italian. Please join us in congratulating:
Enza Antenos
Montclair State University
Enza Antenos is the Director of the BA in Language, Business & Culture and Italian Professor (Dept. of World Languages and Cultures) at Montclair State University. She is also the Teaching and Curriculum Coordinator of Middlebury College Language Schools “Scuola italiana”. She was raised in Canada and is a U.S. resident, yet her roots and soul are in Italy. Throughout her career, she has consistently balanced her enthusiasm for teaching and her involvement in business, transitioning seamlessly between corporate roles to academic positions. In 2019, destiny aligned to offer her the opportunity to unite these dual passions within a joint program, Language, Business & Culture (LBAC), between the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Feliciano School of Business,
Enza is widely recognized as the architect (together with the Coccia Institute) and chair of Montclair State’s signature professional development program, Teaching Italian, now in its 16th year. She has offered a variety of workshops and presented at numerous national and international conferences on topics pertaining to curricular innovation. She has published on the acquisition of elementary Italian, the use of social media as a teaching and learning tool, the professional preparation of Italian teachers, and the innovative interdisciplinary major, LBAC.
Enza continues to innovate Italian curricula while simultaneously preserving the importance of language and culture through on High-Impact Practices such as global learning, internships, interdisciplinary projects, and community-based learning. She is the director of faculty-led study abroad programs in Italy (Florence, Perugia, Modena) and Morocco (Rabat).
Steve LaPeruta
Nutley High School
Steven LaPeruta has been teaching Italian since 2009 at the secondary and higher education levels. He is currently a full-time teacher of Italian at Nutley High School in New Jersey, a part-time Lecturer of Italian at Rutgers University, and an adjunct professor at Montclair State University. In 2022, he began serving on the College Board AP Italian Development Committee. Outside the classroom, he is also an active member of the American Association of Teachers of Italian (AATI), serving on multiple committees.
Steven holds a BA in Italian Studies and Education from Montclair State University, a Master of Arts in Italian Linguistics from Middlebury College, a Masters in ITALS, the teaching of Italian language and culture, from the Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, and a Doctorate in Modern Languages from Middlebury College.
His research interests include the use of technology in second and foreign acquisition and 21st-century game-based learning. His doctoral research concentrates on Italian teachers’ perspective of technology use in language classroom in the post-pandemic period. Additionally, in 2022, Steven authored a linguistic analysis of the works of famed Italian author Italo Calvino, titled La poetica di Italo Calvino, published in the anthology Sulle ali della leggerezza: Calvino oltre la pandemia.