Parking lot. With the silence about the school we have been accomplices | Last bench of Alessandro D’Avenia

It is said that if reality did not exist, it would have to be invented. Invent comes from Latin he found: find. So I prefer to say that if reality was not there (or was masked by the spells of propaganda) we would have to go see it more often in person. Therefore, I would like to dedicate today’s article to the voices with which reality speaks to me. I constantly receive letters from teachers and students, and I have selected some lines from which I have read in recent days, because after more than a month many schools are still in chaos. The objective is not to depress you but to provoke an active resistance movement in the face of situations that have been gangrenous for too long and that the emergency has only made more evident …

I am precarious. Last year I accepted a short substitute. On October 2, he was the second substitute teacher. After 8 days they assign me to another institution. That October 10 class would then have the third substitute. This year I have a broken chair in 3 institutes 200 km away. I hope to survive. In the two years we have changed 20 Latin teachers. Once a substitute teacher (her first time with us) scheduled an assignment, but as soon as she left class, another appeared claiming to be the teacher’s replacement. In science we have always had 3-4 months of substitute instruction due to the systematic absences of the titular teacher. I am a language teacher. They called me at the end of September but the appointments have not yet arrived. God help us. In a year I changed three teachers of domicile, for the rest I lost count. I have never met the English teacher, every year he says goodbye and the substitute circus begins. I have been precarious for 6 years. Since I graduated I have always pursued a chimera: the 2015 Practice, never prohibited, the 24 credits to access the FIT, never was born; the contest postponed until 2020 to be held in the midst of a pandemic, often in regions other than those for which it competes and without additional tests in case of illness or quarantine. All of this for a handful of places that don’t come close enough to fill the need for registered teachers this year. In 5 years of high school I changed 4 teachers of Italian, 4 of Greek and 6 of Latin, 5 only in the two years. I am precarious. In a week I had countless meetings. I limit myself to preparing lessons in my spare time. I wish I could work for the only reason that matters: the students. In a month, due to the lack of a permanent teacher, I have already changed 7 Italian teachers. I have been precarious for five years. I changed 7 schools. More than the disappointment of a system that does not work, the effort to start over, there is the anger of the narrative that they propose to us. In my school today there are 52 teachers out of 109 holders. In third accounting my promotion has changed to 5 law professors, who address the subject. I am in fifth year, there are no teachers, every 2 days we do the DAD but the teachers can’t give us a schedule. Banks are still missing. I am precarious: I changed 7 schools in 3 years. We had two Italian teachers in 2 weeks. I have been a full professor at Scampia for two years: 16 supporting professors are missing and the USR Campania has obscured the rankings. I gave as a gift the stalls together with the Salesians where I taught for 4 years. We are on a journey to discover to ourselves that it is a nightmare.. We are unknown to teachers, teachers who always change, they don’t know our names and that is why they could never teach us to grow. In one year I changed 4 math teachers. Last year I changed 3 Italian teachers, now another one has arrived. Soon I will have to choose the university, the school is not helping me at all. During the two years I have never seen the full-time physics teacher, on leave because he is ill. An alternate has yet to arrive this year. I am in my last year and we are still missing the Italian and hygiene teachers (first and second maturity test). I have lived 5 years of hell with continuous changes of teachers. How do you understand your vocation in these conditions?

I leave out the letters regarding the children who do not yet have support and are left alone. How can all this happen while politicians and unions take pride in their admirable rights struggles? Here is the basic need to humanize (too efficient?) The working conditions of teachers (mostly women: no one breathes the devaluation of women in this field, why?) And of students, whose rights are usually ignored except when they are left at home and we don’t know where to put them. Things have been like this for years and, with our silence, many times we have been complicit: we did not want the school but a parking lot, not teachers but hourly valet parking..