Translator: Gisela Giardino Reviewer: Sebastian Betti Federico is my only son. He misbehaved at school since kindergarten and since then also, he wants to drop his studies. They called me every week of his life, from any level of schooling he was at the moment, to tell me he was misbehaving.
I'd go and listen stoically the complaints of the school and then back home, I'd scold him or hug him, alternatively, I'd punish him, cry and explain to him how important it would be for me that he stops spitting pieces of chewed paper to the classroom ceiling, tripping and later smoking under the tamarisks or setting up a corn war. (Laughter) Around the second year of high school, the school called me again. And I went there again.
The person who spoke with me on that occasion, a teacher, suggested a new alternative that had occurred to him. An extension of Federico's school day in which Federico and this teacher, were going to clean the barns of the agricultural school Federico attended and meanwhile they were going to talk for a while; they were going to try that this was not a time like the typical school time. I think that what Federico learned in those barn afternoons works on him to this day.
That was the end of the times at the dinner table when the main talk was how bad Federico was performing at school and his desire to abandon it. While I was building my relationship with the school as Federico's mother along these lines, I was becoming a teacher. I have been teacher, vice principal and then principal and supervisor, always of public schools in the province of Chubut.
And when I was a teacher, and mostly as a principal, I was on the other side of the desk. I was as Federico's mom and the school called me. And remembering how I felt when I was on that side of the desk when the school called me, it occurred to me to sit on the same side of the desk with the parents when I had to call them to talk about something.
Especially, if I imagined that what I had to tell them may not be easy for them to hear. This may not be a novel idea, but it was like materialization of this simple idea: "we are all on the same side, to think about the kids. " When I was already a principal in a large school with many students that had several shifts, with several levels, I met Joaquín.
Joaquín also behaved poorly. And in this case the school was using one by one, all regulatory instances to get to a suspension. We discussed this a lot, but Joaquín gave us no respite and we had our backs against the wall at a much higher speed than our ability to think other options.
And then the day of suspension came. The school suspended him, and while he was suspended, at a time when Joaquín should have been in school, during school hours when we should've been taking care of Joaquin, Joaquin stole a car, the police caught him, Joaquin got scared, ran away in the car, crashed and killed himself. These two scenes of my life at school, or with the school, Federico and Joaquín, left a mark in my way of thinking the world with school kids forever.
Because I understood that sitting with them on the same side of the desk to think about life could be the difference between life and death. Sometimes, metaphorically and sometimes literally. (Applause) Thinking of Federico and thinking about Joaquín it came to me the idea of a school that never again rushes or puts aside, takes away, expels or suspends, nor asks for a reduction in hours, nor kindly requests to pass to another school no kid ever.
(Applause) I never wanted to push away again another kid from school. And neither the instances in between before expelling them. When I met her, Nebai was 6 years old.
She was the smallest of a family that lived in a corner of the Valdés Peninsula and with his brothers they jumped from the cliffs to the sea and they would gather in their backpacks the largest amount of mollusks their little hands allowed them and the air in their lungs. One morning I woke up and I saw Nebai doing lines of snails in the sand. I came closer and asked her what was she doing, she answered: "Tens.
" Nebai was in the Valdés Peninsula -- have you ever been there? it's declared natural human heritage, making lines of ancient shells in the sand and calling them tens! What an impact the school has, I thought.
A ten and two loose snails form this, she told me, while drawing it in the sand. In fact, every line had 10 snails, we made many numbers from tens and loose snails, and Nebai put them together correctly and wrote them in the sand. But I don't know the names, she'd say to me.
And the letters either, I don't know it well. Do you know them? I kept thinking about Nebai insistently.
Nebai can be just an anecdote, of course. Sometimes the anecdotes can help us think. I think a lot about a phrase that says that we have to take care that our mind doesn't turn into a given, closed, already-made mind because if that happens, its activity is over.
Nebai repeated first grade because she didn't know the name of the numbers. I suggested Nebai's mom to pass her to our school, to see if we could work so that Nebai would not repeat first grade. She replied with a text several days afterwards: "If there's still time, I want to try that the Nebai doesn't repeat first grade.
" If there is still time, Nebai's mother was asking. Yes, there is still time! I wanted to answer her.
Yes, that the school becomes that accent, that coma, that pause. A school that explores ways to be together, that digs in the problems, that makes them their own. (Applause) When all these movements began at the school where I was principal, several teachers quit at the same time.
They went to more orderly, more compliant schools, more driven by the curricula and comfort, I would say. Work licenses and changes of roles crowded our work days and luckily they arrived to put their body and stamina, very young and soon-to-graduate, Roberta and Marisol and Carina, and Silvina, to put all their intention at that school time that came afterwards. After Fede, after Joaquín, after Nebai.
(Applause) We wanted to think up ways and experiences to include all the kids at school. That everyone could be inside. To be able to sleep protected at the principal's office or at the school's kitchen if for some reason they had not been able to sleep at home the night before.
Or to wander from classroom to classroom looking for the learning context that fits you best. To attend school only the months of the cherry harvest or every month except for shearing time, are perhaps another stories I could tell you of that time that came afterwards. A time that completely drilled the box of possibilities univocally shaped by traditional school.
Some teachers said that in the end it was unfair for those who studied or for those who behaved well because then we rewarded them giving them the opportunity of wandering about and staying all day with them. That it was more work for us and that we were much more tired. The kids started to stay all day if they needed to and moms had to get organized to come assist us at lunchtime.
The pumpkin puree flowers drawn with the sleeve over mashed potatoes or songs to poetically ask the food -- Laughter and love were born of that domino effect time in which the school started to think how to be a school that could host all the kids. It is true that it is much more tiring. It's true that sometimes we felt that we were not prepared for this and that our bodies would hurt so much that we no longer felt them.
But there was now a discussion and an idea installed where before there was hardness and certainty. I come across Nebai occasionally walking the streets of the city we live in, already going through adolescence, finishing high school, without having repeated one year of her schooling. And also sometimes I run into Ayrton.
He is a boy we designed activities for when he attended school that would last 45 minutes, which was his attention span, as his educational psychologist explained to us. And now, almost a man, he works in his neighborhood's bakery, 45 minutes kneading, 45 minutes on the counter, 45 minutes distributing -- he learned how to drive, he's got a license -- 45 minutes wiping the bakery. I also run across from time to time the moms of Alma and Gonzalo, who are still friends since the school proposed them that Alma's family shelters Gonzalo the time that his mom couldn't take care of him because she worked and they were new to the city.
The academic performance of Gonzalo, when Alma's family started to take care of him, improved significantly, for those who believe that this is the fundamental task of the school, or of all schools. But also those two families find one another in this infinite loop of giving and receiving because the school proposed to look at themselves in a way that is not a traditional way to see each other from school The one I bump into the most is Federico, my son. He has already grown up, he behaves quite well.
He is a teacher, he works with children who behave badly in school. (Applause) He works with children who have difficulties to adjust to that univocal format that the school keeps proposing them. And I know that this has everything to do with that teacher that instead of throwing him off, got him even more time in school, with the excuse of cleaning the barns.
Thank you. (Applause) Thank you.
