On Tuesday morning participants were hosted at the I.C. Ristori. The Ristori head master, Mrs Iadicicco, after a welcome session with dances and songs performed by Ristori pupils, gave an introductory speech explaining several aspects concerning the school. The headmaster explained that the Ristori staff every day is facing great challenges since the school is placed in “Forcella district” known for high level of delinquency & illegality. As an example the Headmatser reminded that the Ristori kindergarten is dedicated to a teenager girl killed during a camorra ambush because she found herself in the wrong place that afternoon. Beside the historical challenge to operate in a neighbourhood in the last decade the Ristori Staff has had to face the new challenge of dealing with a growing number of immigrants. Due to this environment the Ristori Staff promotes a lots of activities aimed to promote inclusion, legality, by fighting the diversities & discrimination involving all the school audience. As examples the Ristori headmaster quoted the following activities in order to share good practices: the Computer Room where students work & produce the school magazine “Ristoriamoci”, a funny way to mean “let's refresh together” in Italian, referred to the name of the school. The students report all the most important news every month regarding projects, labs, movies, formative experiences and insights into topics of interest. The Theatre Lab is the place where manifestations, shows, dances & representations are displayed: Hip Hop dances versus bullying behaviours, music & songs in English & Spanish language, English plays, conferences; demonstrations such as: Legality Day, Memory Day, Violence against women Day, International day against homophobia, Safer Internet Day, Erasmus plus & many more activities. The CLIL top lab: a very innovative project in our school managed, formatted by one teacher. The use of this CLIL methodology (content and language integrated learning) has motivated our students and helped to learn any subject through English language. It can be a very satisfying way to teach & capture students’ attention as for instance the learning of several scientific terms in English through the manipulation of scientific experiments during the science lab. The Trinity College certification in our Language Class provides English lessons in order to obtain a certification through a final evaluation done by mother tongue teachers. Multimedial Lab where students work with technology & appropriate machine to report, register, take photos and videos of all events of the school. Etwinning Platform where students with both Italian and European partners participate to different projects, since in the school there are few trained teachers and one of them won the european award. After the initial introduction the Ristori Headmaster explained the case of students with Special Education Needs (SEN) Educational inclusion is the key to everyone's educational success. Today there is a great social complexity in the classroom. Students can have difficulties in various fields: - physical conditions (illnesses);
- physical structure (lesions or impairments);
- personal activities (speech impediment, learning disabilities);
- social participation (difficulty in handling social roles);
- environmental factors (problem family, different culture);
- personal factors (poor self esteem, poor motivation).
Our school seeks adequate answers to all special needs: teachers don’t build walls, but give value to differences of each one. School has a problem when it loses students. If the most difficult students are lost, the school is not school. The school that rejects the students in difficulty is like a hospital that rejects the sick and treats the healthy. Defining, finding and recognizing a SEN student does not mean to group different students in order to isolate or discriminate them. On the contrary it means to be aware of the difficulties and learn to respond to them adequately. SEN is not discriminating because each individual might, in the course of his/her life, find himself/herself in a situation of Special Education Needs. Students with SEN need actions tailored on their specific needs, this individuality in some cases takes the name of Individual Educational Plan, in other cases it simply gives way to a specific psycho-educational diagnosis. SEN are many and of different types. A really inclusive school should be able to identify them and generate adequate resources for each need, from the strongest to the weakest. A reference framework is necessary. The ICF (International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health) is the conceptual model drawn up by the World Health Organization. |