(Paolo Mauri - Republic of January 17, 2010) ... wisely put himself into play trying to capture the attention and the complicity of the boys. This was put to their level and played with them often. Rivarossi a train could become the focus of a classroom: Caproni loved trains. Soon ended when the task was sending students to buy some sweets which he distributed as a reward. Teaching is an art.
.... According to De Benedetti there was no distance at all between the poet and teacher, was one.
Marc Bacigalupi and Piero Fossati release in the spring at a book dedicated to Melangolo Caproni teacher who is entitled to if I did the master. (The following quotes are taken from their book)
"So they hated everyone and everything. I then put them together and began to truly feel and live with them. It was the best experience of my life as a teacher. "
"The children felt less the weight of their condition in a class where everyone had the same problem."
recipes but tried not applied the way to grow personally and intellectually his students: "I have to bring the children to language, language. And everything is language: geography, history, arithmetic, design. Language or expression "(Register of Class IV, 1968/69).
'E' that by dint of talking to these brats (pretending 'not to teach') are partly managed to coordinate their ideas "(Register of Class IV, 1952/53).
"Master without method," he confessed. ... "I was the despair of Head teachers." Nor could it be otherwise for he knew that to take in the words of his students are able to arouse the curiosity lessons 'encore'.
Willing even to go personally to seek those who felt uncomfortable in the institution, "the Accordatomi Mr. Director I have done a tour in the homes of repeat offenders, and now I can note with satisfaction that the frequencies are back to normal "(Register of Class IV, 1946/47).
Poetry and mastery
I was the commemoration of the poet Giorgio Caproni asked by the teacher Pamela Di Lodovico, who organized the event. There was talk of Caproni elementary school teacher more than 60 years ago, without asking anyone's permission, has offered a few simple things that must be made to accommodate the children and teach and especially to teach those who have suffered early blows by life " hate everyone and everything. " We refer quello che ho detto ed alcune cose che volevo dire ma non ho detto perché era tardi e le persone erano state fin troppo pazienti.
Innanzi tutto ringrazio la Maestra Pamela che ha voluto mettermi in presenza di un poeta, perché questa è l’occasione migliore per mettere in evidenza alcune cose che riguardano la professione del maestro in genere e quella dei ‘maestri di strada’ dei quali mi occupo da dodici anni.
E’ stato detto stasera che gli allievi di Caproni hanno avuto la fortuna di avere un poeta per maestro, ed è stato detto che Caproni è stato capace di ‘accudire’ i suoi alunni e non solo di insegnargli.
Ora vi dico che ogni maestro è un poeta e se non lo è non riesce a fare his work. What are the components of this poetic work?
The first is that the teacher can see the uniqueness of the person in the middle of a class made up of equal and then blurred. To hear each one just a glance or a word that gives the child the feeling that we are there just for him. The poet can see in the common things in life equal that flows thousands of years, something unique and unrepeatable, and, as he said Caproni, "the firm" in a poem.
The second is that the specific task of a teacher is to see the children for the first time things never seen before, and must approach this task in a sacred manner, respecting the child's mind as if it came in a temple, realizing that this moment is unique. And this is another specific capacity of poets and artists in general, to make us see things, even the most usual, as if they existed now for the first time and exist only for us.
The third thing is the handling. The poet has his head in the clouds, even look around him with a look deep, contemplative and vitality. He sees the pain and energy vital where others see boredom or a practical necessity, and establishes contact with the pupil's life, what some call complicity, what we call the masters of the road 'educational alliance', what others call "Dialogue of life." Caproni took care of his students, did things that relate to 'parental care', brought together under the names of the teacher and the poet's ability - which we define conventionally feminine, but it would be more correct to call parenting - to care, to make gestures aimed at the person as a unique singularity. The cure is not opposed to poetry, not the prose of everyday life, but as the support of a loving and poetic way to meet people. We are masters of the road we do contact work, the first meeting with young people, through a complex ritual gestures, words, questions immediately returns to young people a sense of their uniqueness, the promise of being treated in our school with the respect due to sacred things. We have been told about a contest between teacher and poet Caproni and same with the children scoffed, saying that he was just a teacher. One witness, however, says that the distinction between teacher and poet, according to him did not exist. And I believe this witness because in general, a teacher should be, the way I have described, also a poet.
The second important thing is that I want to stop "giving our word." "I have to bring the children to language, language. And everything is language: the geography, history, arithmetic, drawing. Language or expression " (Registro della classe IV,1968/69).
Carla Melazzini , mia collega e compagna di vita, morta un mese fa, aveva fatto della parola il centro del suo lavoro e della riflessione dei maestri di strada.
Diceva: ‘Abbiamo il privilegio di partire dal grado zero della parola’ ossia di partire da una situazione in cui le emozioni, il dolore, la violenza ambientale hanno prodotto afasia, hanno ingombrato l’animo a tal punto che non c’è spazio né per la parola né per il pensiero. Dare la parola a chi non può averla è una impresa impossibile da compiere con la sola parola (che è lo strumento generalmente usato dall’insegnante) è necessario partire dal grado zero, dal silenzio e dal fatto che i giovani adolescenti ti zittiscono in malo modo, che non ti riconoscono né autorità né autorevolezza. E la “non parola” è per noi la cura e l’arte. L’arte soprattutto nelle sue espressioni visive è per noi un strumento di accoglienza nel quotidiano, la porta attraverso cui comincia un dialogo di vita coi ragazzi, così come lo è la cura che si manifesta attraverso occasioni conviviali, libere conversazioni, attenzione ed ascolto alle loro narrazioni. Ed è la poesia.
Ho sperimentato direttamente nelle situazioni più tragiche la capacita della poesia di dare un nome unspeakable and to help you live. My elementary school was in the middle of a Triangle of Death where the dead killed in one year could be counted in tens and where the only ray of hundred meters from the school in one year there were ten sati killed.
arrived at school children who were murdered uncle, cousin, neighbor and had the injunction not to speak, not to report anything that often occurred before their eyes. A knowledge of the rules of violence also knew that there were 'innocent victims' and' dead guilty, "but also felt that it was not fair that children would pay the violence of adults. In one of these days where I did not know what to do I read the story of Count Ugolino, Dante's verses directly I appeared remarkably clear, made of words not at all archaic. The children in the silence that followed it was agreed before the sacred, and they understood. There were neither comments nor paraphrase, the only simple sharing of a moment that only a poet can say. Another time in front of the general discouragement on an event that I remember, I read 'The calm after the storm. " This time there were many comments and particularly someone commented that 'this young man (the Neapolitan children use "young" as we use ladies) who had written perhaps he had suffered a lot - and I did not say anything about Leopard! - And was asked where they wanted to see him. And when I said I was dead, they said, already dead?; Wanted: a few moments ago that he was here with us. The poetry, the real one, not simple rhymes, contemporary and makes a shared feeling old and children in their freshness and they say they feel by stating that the person is alive.
The ability to bring everything to the language and communication is so powerful that the dean of the School of Medellin Herrera has made it a method. In his school there was a school in the school 'Escuela de los sicarios "(the school of killer) that in a year had took 16 deaths among students and between exercises killings 'motivated'. Oscar Henao The principal realizes that these guys live a basic grammar made up of "money / no money," "life / death." They have no other words. They do not have words to express themselves, but only those to repeat the basic laws of violence. And he worked to give them the word, instructs a group of teachers not to teach anything, but just to talk with the children and then to write a book , to unravel the complex thread of their lives through a shared narrative. It seems impossible to say but in the end defeats the bullets grammar. (See Grammar and Camorra )
And different part, the teacher Erin Gruwell in his first post in the Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, uses the same technique, and uses the word in the consortium to bring civil young gang members who clashed on the outskirts of the city . (Story told in the film Freedom Writers )
So talk and give the floor are the method and the mission of those who want to be a teacher and I stress that we have adopted the name of the teacher for teachers who deal with young adolescents rather than to professor because we have to trace the process of giving the word to those who did not have it.
Finally I want to talk about the 'pantomime' of Caproni. One of his
methods was to pretend to be in trouble and call the boys to help him, and called them 'pantomime'.
experience that I think of all teachers is that if - for distraction - writing on the chalkboard or jump a double apostrophe are wrong, there is a race of students to correct and the most careful and rock are those who habitually commit that 'error. The relationship with the children and students is generally asymmetric and with a positive message - that "you can relate to me, I'm strong enough to support" - carries a negative message: "You are small and can not do anything for me. "
So in this quick comparison between the solitary experience of sixty years ago and that today's organizations, including teaching children and teach teens, I note that there is a method. Just agree on the concept of method. Using a metaphor.
If I say 'you're off-road' I'm criticizing anyone, or I'm telling him that you put in a dangerous situation. If I say "you're off-road", I say one thing today is rich with meaning: there is a luxurious, because the terrain is an essential status symbol, and an aspect of 'safe adventure' because I can half march out of the streets outlined. So our approach is to give us many luxuries, such as to take much time to enjoy things, for example, give us the poem before the practice, for example through conversation because the conversation is "organize their thoughts and not by reading di una regola grammaticale, per esempio girovagare per la città senza meta; e consiste nell’avere un mezzo potente ed avanzato che ci mette in grado di viaggiare fuori strada, ossia per esplorare territori non già strutturati, per trovare vie che sono uniche irripetibili. Questo mezzo avanzato è la sistematica attività riflessiva – nelle jeep si chiama ‘differenziale autobloccante’ che impedisce alle ruote di girare a vuoto!! - che aiuta ciascun docente a ritrovare il senso della sua missione dentro una realtà che spesso è caotica, dentro un sistema di relazioni che lo sconquassa continuamente. Dunque penso che Caproni aveva un metodo potente e talmente forte da non potersi confrontare con la lingua educators of the era if not scoffed at behind the label of the poet. The claim - that the places where we have operated for twelve years is now losing - we've got the masters of the street is that this reflection forged in the fires of a painful practice to enter the circle of a more general reflection on how we educate and how it goes to school. Tonight I'm here for that too, and I am particularly grateful for having Pamela On this occasion, and that he had given to his students throughout the evening were throwing her head back eyes full of love and gratitude.
Cesar Moreno
