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The Minister of Education, Lucia Azzolina, anticipated yesterday how she will return to school in September: mixed education, half at home and half in the classroom. Will it surely be so?
The correct premise: the one that the minister Lucia Azzolina anticipated yesterday in Sky tg24 is just one of the proposals that is being considered to restart the school in September. The first hypothesis: they let Viale Trastevere know, after protests came from the parents’ committees and also from different components of the political world, from the Democratic Party to Italy Live to Forza Italy, always trying to work in school buildings and school structures. to try to guarantee fewer students per class. Which could also mean using lots of open spaces, parks, forests, but also thinking about light partitions to space children in the classroom.
But where did the idea of mixed education come from?
It is not a completely new hypothesis. The Hon. Vittorio Casa (M5S) had already foreseen a few days ago the possibility of integrating traditional teaching with distance learning. And the same idea was already contained in some plans presented to the expert committee led by Patrizio Bianchi and also to the working group chaired by Vittorio Colao. The principle from which all these hypotheses begin is the distancing and non-assembly of children. Assuming that the Italian classes are made up of at least 20 children, it is clear that we cannot bring students back to school with 28/30 people per class. I have always had a battle against the chicken coop classes, explains Minister Azzolina. Divide the classes, the principle also contained in the plan presented yesterday by the Polytechnic of Turin, a study that will be tested early next week in seven schools in Piedmont, five of which in Turin. And it was based on the idea of dividing the students into small groups, also on the plan of Stefano Parisi, manager, former candidate for mayor of Milan for the center-right, for #ricostruireitalia: eight students who would take turns in class activities , outdoor sports, cultural events in museums, e-learning.
Would there be double shifts?
No, the minister clearly excludes them. Students cannot be forced to go to school in the afternoon / evening, risking to overwhelm the rhythms of families. And there will not even be double shifts for teachers, unfounded controversy, the liquid Azzolina. But since students have the right to go back to school, as Azzolina pointed out, mixed teaching would work with an alternation of children in the classrooms.
What does alternation mean?
He met at home and connected, to ensure sociability, Azzolina explained. In this way, those in the classroom will be able to keep their safety distances from their classmates, and those at home will be able to follow the lessons remotely, connecting their webcam to that of the teacher’s computer or tablet. it’s in the classroom. The week of 5 or 6 days of school, the idea that half the students go to visu class for half a week and the other half connect from home to follow what the other half of the class attends, said Azzolina. .
How are the classroom video lessons taken?
It’s not that simple, explains Elena Gabbiani, a digital educator at Gioia High School in Piacenza. This presupposes that the school has an installation that can occupy the entire classroom, perhaps even the blackboard must configure a transmission: we did it, for example, for students in hospital, but it is not the same as doing the lesson from home. From home you sit in front of the computer, if instead you have to share a lesson from school, you have to have external cameras. Among other things, there is also a need for a connection in all classrooms, which is not so obvious in all classrooms.
Would it also affect young children?
Daycare and childhood not, perhaps it might interest those in elementary school. Even elementary school children have to go back to school because it is such a delicate segment of student life where they learn to read and write, so they absolutely have to go back to school, said the Minister of Education. But for elementary school children, they are thinking of exploiting all the possible spaces of the institutes, to guarantee that they can occupy the classrooms safely and avoid mixed education, which is a mode specially designed for older and autonomous children.
But didn’t distance learning have too many problems and delays to work?
The school was not ready to do what it did, distance learning which I consider an important step forward, albeit with many difficulties, was a great success, Azzolina said. My commitment and that of the entire ministry was to intervene immediately to prevent students from staying home alone without doing anything, and therefore we made a commitment. We created the page on the ministry website right away, invested money and got help from the third sector and associations to distribute devices to everyone. We ask teachers not to leave our students alone.
Basically, how would this mixed teaching be organized?
It will have to be a constitutive year, explains the head of the working group of the Ministry of Education, Patrizio Bianchi. We are exploring all possibilities, from a school perspective, which must necessarily be more open. We will need precise guidelines from the ministry on mixed methods and autonomy by the institutions to interpret them, because not all the country is the same.
How will the exams be carried out?
The oral exam of the final exam will be done in presence. In large settings it can be done, students have a right to it, says Azzolina. And the government clarifies that even the graduation exams, as well as all the activities related to the investigation (practices and exercises) can be carried out as long as the safety conditions are guaranteed, or on the condition that there is an organization of spaces and work as to minimize the risk of proximity and aggregation.
If the parents return to work, who will the children be with?
If we return to work from May 4, we must respond to families immediately. For this reason, together with Minister Bonetti and other government ministers, we are working on a protocol that we will shortly also present to the Scientific Technical Committee, to allow small groups of children to follow, 4 or 5 no more. All this in collaboration with local authorities, said Azzolina. A reopening of nests and kindergartens is already being considered in the coming weeks. And the Ministry of Education is working with the Family Ministry to build summer camps, also using schools, patios and gyms to respond to families since June 8, the last day of school. The nanny bonus increases from 600 to 1,200 euros in total, which can be used to register for supplementary services for children and summer camps for children up to 12 years old.
How will students overcome this phase?
We ask that the ministry make a special unit available to help individual directors organize themselves better. There is a training problem to help our students get out of this trauma. The request of the school work group to the Ministry of Education, anticipated by its president Patrizio Bianchi. In the restart phase, he emphasized, the issue of school autonomy will be central. We are an expert committee that, which will expire on July 31, wants to provide the ministry, before then, with a roadmap for schools to function, ensuring that all students can make the best use of the conditions we can. offer.
May 3, 2020 (change May 3, 2020 | 2:44 pm)
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