People who complain about her tangents are only somewhat justified and are exaggerating highly. For someone to be in tears because of Donatella is an absolute joke. She is very concerned with students' learning and to say otherwise is beyond me. Yes, she rambles a bit, and yes, sometimes her sense of humor is a little hard to receive, but overall she really cares about her students and is a wonderful TA/instructor. I feel bad for her reading some of these reviews because to me they feel very undeserved. Like others said, she allows extra time on quizzes when it's needed/when she can afford to (sometimes she has another class right after). I took Italian 6 with her and she went out of her way to allow students to turn in late work for full credit without which I certainly wouldn't have gotten the A that I got with her.
Overall:
Very concerned with student learning, very available, very open and underneath the surface dry humor, a very kind heart.

She is awesome. Great sense of humor, very understanding and very relaxed. She is open to questions and explains more if the students don't understand. I would take a class with her again!

I had Donatella for both Italian 3 and 6. While her class did go off on tangents at times, they were at least relative to Italian such that they talked about her Italian life and we were able to learn more about Italy that way. She was very concerned with our progress, especially since she always gave us extra time on papers and practically everything we had to do. She would even help us on tests by having us look over sections and check those answers. Usually, when she did this, that meant that there were some wrong answers in there and we could easily get more points by fixing them. As the quarter would end, she would review our assignments and let us know what we were missing so that we can possibly do it over, or check it again. She was always available when I dropped in for office hours and she was concerned with my absences as well. I have never had a bad instructor in the Italian department, but I'm assuming that it really depends on the student's enthusiasm to learn and understand the Italian culture. I really don't get the negative comments. If you do your work (which is not that hard) and you participate in class, there is nothing to worry about and you can pass either Italian 3 or 6 with an A

Donatella is a TERRIBLE TA. I had her for Italian 6. By this time I had a pretty good grasp on the Italian language, but she made me feel terrible. She would just ramble on very quickly in Italian so that none of us could understand her and then when we finally would get around to the grammar, if we didn't understand it she could never figure out why. Being a native Italian speaker, she just assumed that we could hear what sounded correct.

She belittled me to end when I tried to ask questions or attempt to have her do more than just read the grammar section from the book verbatim. I can read the book on my own. I needed her to actually teach me and have us apply it.

I also completely agree with everything the previous poster said. No organization, technologically challenged, wouldn't send us our homework due the next day until 5 pm that evening, and no concern about student learning.

Do not take her!