Covid-19, the advice of Webecome experts

Close glances, advice from Webecome experts to support educational action 

With Covid-19 we are facing something new, which we are learning about and which is not yet fully understood. The situation we are experiencing leads us to re-think spaces, times, ways and tools to continue living everyday life.

Telling this moment in the words of the children, one could say that “an invisible monster has arrived among us, has taken possession of our bodies and our lives forcing us home, without school, away from work, friends, dance, gym, entertainment ... ".
The precautions taken forced us all into our homes. Empty streets, closed shops, forced isolation have become part of an unthinkable daily imagination. For the protection of all, we have changed our habits, we have reduced sociality by raising the risk of isolation and loneliness, when instead it is precisely the quality of relationships that more than anything else can be an antidote to fear, which we all feel also the little ones.

Forced isolation has made us more likely to use digital and more benevolent in assessing its impacts. It certainly allows us to continue to live our contacts, even if in a different way. It certainly allows us to continue studying and working, given that schools and companies have accelerated their ability to give continuity to activities through technological solutions. Finally, digital appears to us as a necessary resource and no longer as a taking time trap or as a medium of entertainment.
In this seemingly sci-fi scenario, children look at us and draw signals, live our anxieties and fears, they have discovered death, they have had to interrupt their life routine, they are adapting their world view with apparent unconsciousness.

Parents, teachers and the educating community have a responsibility to make children participate in the ongoing challenge, they have a duty to give children clear and simple information on what is going on. It is necessary to prevent children from giving explanations independently, by making incorrect connections or by developing strange or wrong ideas. All this would risk to amplify their worries and anxieties. It is important to answer their questions simply and clearly. It is essential to listen and welcome their fears. It is indispensable to talk about it together and legitimize their emotions.
Elisabetta Dodi, pedagogist and trainer, Domenico Barrilà, psychotherapist and Adlerian analyst, Alberto Rossetti, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, all already Webecome experts, will try to provide primary school teachers and parents with food for thought on the relationship with children in this particular time and on the impacts that digital can have in interacting with school.
We also offer training content to primary school teachers that provide useful information for approaching digital teaching. The videos, created by our Central Development Policies and Learning Academy Department, even if designed for remote classroom teachers inside the bank, suggest ways and precautions to manage digital educational experiences.

In this experience we are all quickly learning to do new things in a new way. It is an acceleration that is teaching us a lot and that is leading us to change our point of view on many aspects that affect our daily lives.

Webecome is an educational proposal for primary schools that supports teachers, school managers and parents in actions to prevent and contrast new phenomena of social unease and in initiatives to develop the transversal skills of girls and boys. It offers an online platform with dedicated access for primary school teachers, school managers and parents that allows everyone to benefit dedicated content.