Home school

This week we got a special invitation. Two years ago some girls who came to Italy for therapy started attending home schooling. It is a possibility offered to those who always having to undergo medical treatment cannot go to ordinary school so it is the school that comes to your home. In this case, some teachers of the middle school in the country have made themselves available to come to the hermitage and devise an ad hoc program for them.
In this way the children are in effect students and also receive the report card which they then need when they return home. In fact, last summer at the end of the school year the teacher came to hand over the report card in person, declaiming the votes to the mothers to give an account of all the work done.

Then the girls after the treatment returned home, without ever knowing their classmates .. now they are back for periodic checks and the teacher has invited us to school. In a small town like Pecetto, the arrival of these companions from afar is a real event. Before meeting the class, the principal wanted to introduce them to the whole school so class by class they came in to say hello and then simply a circle of chairs in the courtyard and finally the Italian classmates and the girls from afar were able to tell each other .. so many questions about daily life, what you eat, what music do you listen to, where are you going on vacation, there is no time to tell each other everything that the bell rings, you have to make another appointment, next time they will come to the hermitage. When they leave school, the parents wait for their children and recognize them: «My child has been talking about you for a week! We finally know each other! ».

It is nice to know that you are known and expected thanks to the teachers who have always talked about those invisible companions. They could have done the task on their own but they wanted to involve the whole class immediately and thanks to them a beautiful friendship was born.

Maria Claudia Brunello
NP October 2021