Assia Federico is a perky woman, a very tall blonde full of life. Her eyes always shine, but when she talks about her work she shoots something really special, proud and loving together.
For years she has worked with both differently able students and with the "taking charge" of others with learning difficulties that fall under the so-called BES (Special Educational Needs) category, for the sake of brevity called by her special students.
Indeed, they are students who present a request for special attention for a variety of reasons: social and cultural disadvantage, specific developmental disorders, difficulties arising from lack of knowledge of culture and language.
"Developmental disorders" means, in addition to specific learning disabilities, language deficits, non-verbal skills, motor coordination, attention and hyperactivity, including intellectual limit functioning.
As a physical education teacher, Assia specializes through a 2-year multi-purpose course with university professors from Latina and Bergamo. He enters the role following a competition for the subject of physical education with the possibility of other training in various fields of specialization.
After the first year of testing, he fell in love with this support activity and actually became a part of it in '92. When he talks to you about his vocation to help others, you always feel all the naturalness, the liveliness, the enthusiasm alive: "I have always been led to defend the weak. I myself was a victim of bullying, of the many forms of disrespect that can be imposed for free . "
Let's explore the relationship between sport and disability
You teach in a category called "with difficulty". But what does it really mean to teach?
All school contents should be seen as means of personal development within a clear and precise pedagogical project. Everything that intervenes in the didactic act must be adapted not so much or not only to the content, but to the inner processes necessary to make the contents its own.
The means by which to intervene in inner processes is love. If something is passed through the vehicle of love, there is no teaching that does not reach where it should and in the necessary time. Giving with love triggers a powerful change in the other, fills him with self-esteem and makes him feel more capable.
A practical example?
A student of mine with a fictional name, Marica, had an intellectual quotient of 57 at the beginning of our school work, to spend 65 years in the following three years. The same psychologist who followed her complimented me on this progress.
Has fear ever taken over your teaching work? Have you ever felt it?
Fear comes when you think so much about yourself, too. If you think about it, it is a very selfish emotion: fear is selfishness.
I give an example: I also worked with a very robust autistic boy; to take the edge, if he wanted to give me a slap, he would have easily knocked me to the ground. But I never had this negative thought; you are afraid when you want to survive something you fear .
The guys I work with feel sensibly that I'm doing good to them and I can't think of the possibility that any of them will send me back to harm. This is why I work in a serene atmosphere that favors personal interactions and empathy .
Does being a good teacher also mean having had to do with pain closely?
Sensitivity cannot be developed if you have not gone through suffering . Not all those who suffer know how to take advantage of it: it depends on their degree of consciousness and on the level of fear that can be aroused by looking inside.
There is more talk about inclusion and scholastic and social integration, why?
It may be because the education system is really making an effort to do so as a result of increasingly socially incident migratory flows. There is more interest in technological and educational innovation, more willingness to offer rich training proposals. But it is also true that it would take much more to talk about an effective global improvement.
Furthermore, there is no discipline today that has not been revised according to the needs of the BES: school books have also been simplified in some parts. There is more attention to the problems of the behavioral and relational sphere : I am also thinking of disorders such as hyperactivity, mild delay and dyslexia.
Omega-3 and hyperactive children: is there a bond?
But is there a real margin for improvement for a disabled student?
Certainly assistance is constant, but if the situation is taken into account promptly, it is possible to stimulate interest, increase attention and profit. It is like entering a world so hermetic that it needs particular keys to be opened: it is enough to go from time to time to open the right lock to enter their most intimate sphere and discover it.
If you can tune in to those channels, you not only get in touch with a person, but begin to develop positive predispositions towards others. It takes a lot of sensitivity and an honest approach, as these guys read inside even without using the visual approach, they immediately feel the positive fluid and the purity of what is being given to them. Much of perception passes through hearing and innate intuition .
And did you do a job on intuition?
I think I have a gift, which to some might even annoy me: I am able to know the individual personalities in real time by using readable data reading capabilities with continuous action research . Another reason that makes my job as a support teacher easier.
What is PEI?
This is the Individualized Educational Program that is adopted in the school planning of children with disabilities. The analysis of Functional Diagnosis is made by the ASL, then there is the observation of the support teacher on the student, the coordination phase between teachers and the initial meeting with the family and the ASL specialists who give their indications and sign the IEP .
In practice the programming is "in itinere" as it undergoes a series of checks and adaptations during the year to bring the student to educational and training success.
Let's go the other way, let's talk about those who from "normal" relate to these "special" cases. What do you notice in them?
The able-bodied pupils must be educated to understand, to accept and to interact with the disabled children and with the BES boys.
Therefore it takes an appropriate explanation in this sense from the teachers, also repeated or individualized according to the cases, otherwise it never takes the acceptance from all the companions.
The minds of students are unique worlds : therefore each student is a resource to be valued for the class and which must guarantee its own form of cognitive excellence.
