About Us

Think Italian Live Italian. A focus on planning and managing study holidays in Italy, benefitting from the collaboration of companies and people specialized in the various sectors involved in the complex, articulated preparation of high-quality study holidays.
Study holidays include multiple activities, commitments and perspectives that make the proposal unique and special, requiring specific preparation using a combination of skills.
Indeed, achieving this specialization requires intersecting and combining different skills which, only thanks to their collaboration, have allowed achieving very valid results; a synergy of forces and prerogatives all united towards a common objective, in the awareness of forming a cohesive, determined, collaborative team for a common purpose: the creation of truly special Summer Programs.
Every participating aspect offers its contribution with the aim of creating an educational summer community destined to leave a strong mark on each participant, so that the positive, welcoming, constructive, serene attitude contributes to becoming a custom, and so that the Italian cultural and linguistic experience is a model of research and openness to the world.

Mirtilli Morgana

Sonia Beretta

STUDIO ARCOBALENO in the past and at present has one great goal:
TO SPREAD THE ITALIAN LANGUAGE AND CULTURE in the world and in particular in the United States by:

  • training teachers,
  • creating teaching materials
  • organizing educational and cultural trips in Italy and Europe.

The teaching materials are based on the research and design carried out by teams formed ad hoc to identify the best pathways and work itineraries in the field of teaching, in the different school levels and grades, arranging them for use on paper and through technological, computer, and electronic media.

The Arcobaleno Research Team was founded in 1984, with a focus on developing teaching materials with the aim of experimenting and disseminating them with the publication of educational materials in different languages. The Team also works with various illustrators, researchers, translators, and authors already established or emerging in the field of Scholastic Publishing, finally becoming a business in 1991.

  • Evers since the 1980s, the Studio has promoted study conferences, conferences and seminars for teachers with the aim of reflecting on and renewing methodological-educational approaches and at the same time supporting the research of the IARD Institute of Milano in the field of teaching Italian as a foreign language abroad, studying the relative problems and perspectives. This collaboration has given rise to a series of seminars and conferences around the world, also under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
  • Between 2001 and 2007, the Studio carried out important teacher training activities and focused on publishing teaching materials and textbooks for English-speaking countries, in particular in the United States.
    Over the years Studio Arcobaleno has multiplied its editorial commitment to teaching the Italian Language and Culture with technologically advanced multimedia, interactive and hypertext perspectives, and by training the Italian teachers that it has met at more than 350 conferences around the world, through an advanced technological platform capable of supporting online work pathways.
  • It has offered students trips to Italy with linguistic and cultural perspectives since 2009, proposing specialized, personalized study holidays based on the specific needs of teachers and students, with the goal of enhancing, motivating, and interesting students in the Italian Language and Culture.
  • The pandemic of 2020 put a strain on relations, isolating teachers and students and causing difficult situations within the school and in classroom communications. Arcobaleno addressed and, in a certain sense, attacked the situation, promptly analyzing the problems that arose and offering more than 23 training and support courses to about 1,750 teachers in only two years, with participants from all over the world. Arcobaleno offered various possible solutions accompanied by educational materials adapted to the new school situation.
  • Crowning and celebrating the 30 years of activity of Studio Arcobaleno, the ArcoEduMagazine was created in 2021: a monthly magazine at an international level for Italian teachers all over the world. It is an ambitious project which matured step by step in these years supporting Italian Language and Culture, which finally came to light in the summer of 2022 thanks to the collaboration of experts and teachers who contributed their valuable contribution.

Federica Protti

The story of Superciao Tour dates back to around 2004 when the Superciao Tour Project Leader Federica Protti had her first experience accompanying a group of Italian language teachers from America on an exploratory trip to Italy to visit Italian schools and learn about the methods they use to teach English.

  • Since that distant 2004, in collaboration with Studio Arcobaleno, her activities and commitment in the travel sector have multiplied, creating hundreds of personalized itineraries “tailored” for American schools according to different needs and requests.
  • Superciao Tour began to develop independently in 2012 as a legally recognized tour operator, offering trips full of truly special activities ranging from all kinds of workshops, to visits to places outside the classic tourism circuit but of fundamental cultural reference, to tastings, sports initiatives, meetings with Italian schools…
  • The Project Leader specialized in mass-media linguistic and cultural studies organized a methodological-didactic study team and was thus able to create, develop, and propose teaching materials to Italian teachers abroad and – especially in the United States – which focus on the country, culture, history, all presented according to their indications and local school programs.
  • Superciao Tour currently has more than 30 itineraries in Italy and Europe, all fully tested and perfected, featuring a very high level of specialization with the possibility of personalizing each trip.
    These packages are curated down to the smallest details, with aspects and dimensions created specifically for students and adults to experience their trip to Italy according to an educational perspective and a highly cultural value.
    There are no impossible destinations because Superciao Tour studies, with an almost family-level care and attention, every possible request that comes from teachers or groups of adults.
    Superciao Tour also offers the opportunity to enjoy study holidays in Italy characterized by the desire to create Italian atmospheres and experiences adapted to the reality of young people with linguistic-cultural and leisure perspectives.

Maria Cristina Mignatti

With a degree in Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Bologna and in Communication Sociology from the University of Urbino, she has 20 years of experience as an English language teacher in a state linguistic high school.

She has always been involved in teaching foreign languages, starting from an experimental thesis applied to teaching Russian. In 2007 she moved on to the role of school principal first for a three-year period in Italy and for the next nine years at MAECI with the same role at the Embassy of Canberra, Australia based in Melbourne, Victoria, and at the Embassy of Ottawa in Canada, based first in Montreal, Quebec and then in Toronto, Ontario.
For nine busy years she has worked to launch projects to promote the Italian language, from CLIL didactics to exchanges and partnerships with Italian schools, with 14 started with Australian schools, to projects to support small suburban communities, obtaining the funding offered by MAECI for the ITALIANOGIOCANDO program co-designed with colleagues and friends of Studio Arcobaleno for two consecutive years.

This unique opportunity has allowed us to meet Italian teachers from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, also creating educational and updating settings on new teaching materials. The collaboration with the teacher-trainer Luca Buiani in Toronto also allowed her to further her approach to online teaching and to see it applied well before the pandemic.

Lastly, she honed her knowledge and skills as an educational leader, starting with a Master’s Degree in Public Administration Management at the University of Florence, with an Instructional Leadership Project at the Bastow Institute in Melbourne and then with the Level 1 Course of ISL (Instructional School Leadership) organized by OPC, the professional organization of school leaders in Ontario with the scientific support of Michael Fullan, world-renowned advisor of educational leadership and president emeritus of OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education) in Toronto.

Among other successful initiatives, the professional job-shadowing exchange between executives of Italian and Ontario schools carried out for four years with the scientific support of Prof. Paletta of the University of Bologna, Department of Business Sciences, deserves mention.

Luca Buiani

Graduated in Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Bologna in Slavic philology with a linguistic thesis on the origin of the Russian language based on the semantic development of ancient Russian in the chronicles of Kievan Rus’, Luca is very interested in languages and cultures in general.

After emigrating to Toronto in 1988, he has always worked on teaching foreign languages, initially working as an Italian language teacher in elementary and middle schools of the YCDSB, to the north of Toronto.

In 1996 he began working as Coordinator of Italian Programs at the same Superintendency, refining his skills in programming school curricula, promoting the Italian language, and training school staff engaged in teaching Italian level L2 to children and teenagers.
He has repeatedly participated, initially as a participant and later as a trainer, in the training courses organized locally by the Italian School and Culture Center, for example those who saw the ELLE Project as the fulcrum of language teaching in the 1990s.
He has worked as coordinator to launch projects for the promotion of the Italian language since 1996, from teaching, to exchanges with Italian schools, to projects to support program financing through the MAECI and quality teaching. More recently, the collaboration with the then-educational director of the Toronto Consulate, Maria Cristina Mignatti, has also allowed him to further his approach to online teaching and see it applied well before the pandemic.
One example was the efforts to support and develop the ITALIANOGIOCANDO program co-designed with colleagues and friends of Studio Arcobaleno and the educational directorate of the consulate, with which the international magazine ArcoEduMagazine was also launched. The experience of ITALIANOGIOCANDO and teacher training enabled him to develop, during the 2020-22 pandemic, an entire program for teaching the Italian language from first grade to third grade entirely online in collaboration with all the teachers.
The collaboration on this project was also a unique opportunity that allowed him to meet Italian teachers from Ontario, Quebec, and New York, also creating training and updating settings on new teaching materials. These experiments also led him to collaborate with scholars from OISE, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, for example with Professor Enrica Piccardo, on teaching languages.
From 2015 to 2021 he was vice-chair of Comites, Toronto section, for six extremely interesting years. The initiatives to which he contributed as an important vice-chair included the first exhibition of the Italian-Canadian book, Librissimi, and the collaboration with the prestigious ICFF, the Italian Contemporary Film Festival, both in the version for adult audiences and for school pupils.

Since 2010 he has been chair of ILEA, the International Languages Educators Association of Ontario (www.ilea.ca), which works closely with the Ontario Ministry of Education for the conduct and development of International Languages Programs.

In 2012 he was a member of the committee that drafted the ministerial document governing the International Languages Program in Ontario.
To politically support teaching the program in his Superintendency, he has been Chair of the local teachers’ union, CUPE 5476, since 2019.