Reopening schools: webinar to deal with it

We are convinced that school is the place where the educational relationship that includes learning and relationships between peers and between adults and children develops.
In this relationship, children and young people are the protagonists, so we think that the educating community has the task of accompanying them on the path of growth, bearing in mind that they need to discover, invent, build, search, fantasize in order to learn to get excited.
We know that all this happens when adults are able to read their exchanges with children and young people in a simple, transparent and sincere way, expressing their emotions and trying to translate the moods and the complexity of reality into words.

The pandemic has brought a strong sense of precariousness to the school that has mobilized the commitment of many. Many teachers and parents have found concrete solutions to the various critical situations presented by digital infrastructures and platforms and by distance learning. Surely, this spontaneous synergy between parents and teachers has generated a climate of mutual trust and recognition that has made it possible to make the best use of the digital resources deployed by families, schools or the many associations and businesses mobilized.

We too, with Webecome did not stand still
In the first months of the emergency, witnessing an unprecedented experimentation of distance learning, we aimed to provide support to teachers with Tips and tools for distance learning".  We shared some video clips to give suggestions on the use of the digital tools they have chosen to ensure educational continuity and to make it easy and non-intrusive for the school to enter homes and families' daily lives.
In addition, we have made available the videos where the Webecome experts proposed reflections on how to take care of girls and boys and on the importance of listening in that time of isolation.

Now the school starts again. The suspension of school activities and the emergency situation have led to significant alterations in the social and relational life of children and young people, sometimes causing a slowdown in learning processes, with possible educational and psychological effects that should not be underestimated.
So it is desirable that children return to classrooms, safely. For this we need to find different spaces and new ways of being together. We need to experience how to be close even if at a distance, but above all, we need to reactivate the imagination and attention. These needs, a priority for us, have pushed us further to think about new project lines and new meanings to give to the educational proposal of Webecome.

We have already reflected on how we can restart the physical relationship with our children, how it will be appropriate to place ourselves, especially in the early stages, in the comparison of a new way of starting dialogue with the class. For this reason, with a view to co-design, through a virtual space for sharing and comparison, we listened to experts, teachers and parents. From the synthesis of these feedbacks, Banchi con le ali, was born, our proposal for the restart.

Giving wings to the desks means continuing to imagine new ideas and proposals to grow together again.
The project started with the first two webinars, which were held in June and July, in which expert teachers and parents met to identify concrete approaches and methods to face the return to class, aware of having to manage a situation different from the educational routine. We also explored the ways and behaviors to adopt to help children get out of emotional silence by finding the right ways to voice their emotions and learning to observe the small signs of anxieties and fears indirectly told by their behaviors.

Banchi con le ali will continue in the coming months to analyze and elaborate the experience of the return of teachers and parents, to draw together new ideas and guide the development of the educational proposal through tools capable of supporting the new normality and new ways of being together, at school and out of it. Experience after experience we will broaden our alphabet. We will take every opportunity to experiment with new content and new educational practices and will share the best things to encourage learning.

Sharing knowledge, transmitting closeness to the educating community and contributing to the education of children, especially in the phase in which they form the basis of their future acting as adults, represent our challenges!
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   September 2020