Positive Approach, Even if in Quarantine

Daily pills to help students (and families) organize their study in Covid-19 times, when almost one billion children have seen their schools close. Signed by Marcello Bramati and Lorenzo Sanna, deans and teachers at Faes High schools in Milan. As reported by Time magazine, they are teaching online during the lockdown, in an ongoing experiment in remote learning. Every morning at 8.30 a.m., their advice, tips and good practices for students of all ages.

Positive and negative: two crucial adjectives of this period, but also two opposing and inevitably fluctuating moods, in an incessant succession of tragic bulletins, alarming data and perhaps a shred of hope for the future.

Today we want to face the need to offer, as educators, a positive look regarding not only tomorrow's projects, but also the present we are living in and which seems dominated by gloom. Teachers or parents who offer a positive outlook do not renounce to a correct reading of reality. They also seek important glimpses to build trust and esteem, rocks to cling to and then rise again, with renewed hope.

The educator who stimulates positive reflection dwells not only on the first news, but also on inconspicuous data, which allow the glances of young students to rise above the screen and reach the block nearby, with the stories of positive and collaborative resistance of their neighbors.

Positive educators do not stop at the judgment and condemnation, social or real, of the people who get fined and of those who always make the wrong decisions. Instead, they suggest the comparison of different points of view and use this historical moment to ask questions, daring to propose constructive visions.

In a horizon in which positivity seems limited to heroism and personal sacrifice of the few, we need to show the daily choices of the many who do their best for others, in many small daily gestures. Thinking of grandparents and elderly relatives, necessarily far away, let's build a world of solidarity and mutual trust.