On the first day of class, high school teacher Roberta Guttilla asks her new students why they want to learn Italian, and loves to hear their answers. “They tell me all these different stories,” Guttilla says. “They fell in love with the culture, they visited Italy once, they want to major in Italian in college. Or they say, ‘My great grandparents were Italian and never passed on the language to us.’”

Guttilla is an Italian instructor at York Community High School in Elmhurst, where this year she’s teaching five classes of different levels. She is also certified to teach Spanish and English as a Second Language.