Multilingual Learners at CRLS awarded a $10,000 grant in honor of a former CRLS educator, Giustina Mastrangelo Brosio (aka Ms. Hibbs)
Posted on 05/26/2022
The grant will be used to support multilingual learners in a variety of ways, including field trips, community building activities, and resources for learning. The ELL Department is grateful for the support of Mr. Brosio and is excited to use the grant to expose our immigrant students to opportunities and experiences that their American peers typically experience during their time in Cambridge Public Schools. It is our hope that these experiences increase students' sense of belonging to their new country, which in turn, will increase students self-esteem and belief in their abilities to succeed.
“Ms. Hibbs taught Spanish, Italian and French for 35 years at Cambridge High and Latin and then at CRLS where she was known as “Ms. Hibbs”. Ms. Hibbs loved teaching and profoundly enjoyed meeting and mentoring students, whom she respected, inspired and sought to encourage in their studies, but also to help in their approach to life. She sought to include and stimulate interest in all of them, had a unique ability to encourage them and cheer them on over any minimal sign of progress. She shared with them her love for travel, world music and art, served as faculty advisor to student language clubs (most noticeably the Italian club) and chaperoned numerous cultural excursions around Boston and internationally. She spent summers working for Cambridge youth and culture programs when not traveling and perfecting languages abroad. She was also an active member of the community, working with Mayor Alfred Vellucci to promote pride in the history, culture and contributions of Italo-Americans. She taught and felt for immigrants, both young and adult, and never forgot to have been one herself. She deeply valued the local dialects immigrant children frequently communicated with at home as languages in their own right, while teaching students the modern national languages. She also encouraged respect and pride in family root cultures.” -- Written by her husband, Mr. Guido Brosio