Shout Out: Dolores Pigoni-Miller, Italian teacher at Ridgewood
Dolores Pigoni-Miller teaches Italian at Ridgewood High School in Norridge. Her leadership in her AP Italian Culture and Literature class has led her students to pursue a variety of fundraisers to help Italy's victims of an August 2016 earthquake.
Q: What made you decide to do the fundraiser?
A: In all of my classes, we were reading articles about the devastation the earthquake caused as part of our ongoing study of contemporary Italy. ... Italy lost some of its precious monuments, and others need major restoration. It was my AP Italian Culture and Literature students who began to feel an urge to help in some way. All of these students are also members of the Italian National Honor Society. I feel strongly that it is important to teach students such philanthropic values. It also presents a great opportunity to strengthen the ties between RHS and the surrounding community and to create new relationships between Americans and Italians.
Q: How is the fundraiser going and what are your goals?
A: The fundraiser is going better than we could have ever imagined! While the needs of the earthquake victims are enormous, we began with modest goals for what we would be able to contribute. The INHS kids set a goal of $1,500. Since then, we received a generous donation of $1,000 from Mr. Ronald Rossi of Rossi Construction Company, and the GoFundMe page my students have created has already generated $275 in donations in just one day. These successes lead the group to reset their goal at $3,000 when they posted their video on Facebook. In less than 48 hours, they have already received over 9,000 views! INHS would like to be able to offer as much towards earthquake relief as we possibly can. We are also making efforts to get chef Mario Batali to come to our school and help us make Pasta all'Amatriciana, the specialty dish of one of the towns which was most affected by the quake. We have also contacted Ellen DeGeneres: we sent the video to the Ellen show in the hopes that she can get him to Ridgewood for us, and we have asked her to come to our Festa Italiana on Nov. 30 so that she can induct our new Italian National Honor Society members! In turn, we have offered to induct her as an honorary member of Ridgewood's Chapter of INHS, the Leonardo Da Vinci Society.