Creative interview (Italy)

Senn's vlog

 

Noa's vlog

My confinement

Today I’d like to speak to you about my confinement.

When I got the news of Coronavirus I wondered in my head: ”What do you mean by Coronavirus?”.

Now I know what Coronavirus is and I know it’s about me and you.

I live in Assago, in Lombardy, the Italian region with the highest number of Covid-19 cases.

In the first lockdown in Lombardy the situation was very complicated.

From the 24th of february schools have been closed throughout the region.

All days were an infinity roundabout.

I was very sad.

In the summer the situation has improved.

I’m now waiting for the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Tell me why we can’t do something, all the world is waiting for the sunrise, but it is hard to get.

If we work together we can go out of this nightmare and the pandemic will be only a bad memory.

Matteo

Italy

Read and... invent the end of the story!

SHOW ME... YOUR SMILE!

 I was sitting quietly at my desk when a group of boys approached me.

There! Now they will start tormenting me for my weight, which has always caused me a lot

of discomfort at school. Frank, the small group leader, was ready to comment on how fat

and ugly I was, but before he could speak, someone stopped him.

The janitor had just arrived in our class and had, not very gently, grabbed the boy by the

ears and tried to pull him away.

She tried to quiet the class, and as soon as everyone was silent, she spoke:

"You will have a new P.E. teacher since the previous one was involved in an accident and

won't be able to teach for a while; try not to make too much noise because, if the new

teacher finds you difficult to handle and leaves, you won't have any more teachers for this

subject".

Said this, the janitor left the class listlessly, giving way to a very strange-looking teacher.

He was skinny and tall; his complexion looked like a corpse, and his face had a mixed

expression between annoyed and impassive.

He sighed loudly and, without even bothering to ask our names, he started to speak:

"Good morning, I'm Mr Show and today is my first day at work in this class, so I believe that

explaining is useless ".

Hurray! My classmates and I looked at each other, smiling and looking forward to two hours

of freedom.

"In fact, we are going to do a test".

All our joy disappeared as soon as he said those words.

"Come on, get changed. We're going to the gym to take a test to qualify your physical

abilities."

Frank jumped to his feet: "You can't give us a test without warning!"

The teacher didn't listen to him and went to the gym, still with a very serious expression on

his face.

I struggled to get up from my desk and started to follow the teacher, but once out of the

classroom, I realised I had forgotten my gym shoes, so I went back to class. When I arrived at

the door, a noise caught my attention.

I leaned over to see what it was, as everyone had left the classroom, or so I thought.

John, a very short but stocky boy, turned as soon as he saw me:

"Hey, what are you doing here?"

He put away a sharp object he was fiddling with.

"I could ask you the same question".

The boy sighed: "I don't want to do the test... so I decided to dig a tunnel in the wall to

escape from school, don't tell the teacher!"

I looked badly at my classmate: "You'll get caught".

At that point, I decided to leave, but a third figure appeared at the classroom entrance.

"So do you want to run away? I want to come too".

It was Anne, one of the prettiest girls in the class, but she never talked to me. I just knew

that she was always busy with ballet lessons, and she didn't have time to socialise.

"I'm sorry, but the girls can't come," John commented dryly.

She came closer to us: "But I want to come. I've heard your whole plan, and if you don't

involve me I'll tell the teacher".

My partner unwillingly waved at her to join us, even if I was more and more puzzled.

He handed us one of his tools, and we started to drill holes in the wall.

At one point, we heard something clanging, and then water began to gush out of the wall.

"Okay, don't panic. I'm sure it's nothing serious," said John, scratching his head.

A powerful jet of water came out of the wall drenching the three of us.

"Nothing serious, you said," muttered Anne, who, immediately after that sentence, came

out quickly from the classroom, coming back shortly after with a ball in her hand. She

motioned for us to move and placed the ball on the ground. She took a breath and kicked

the ball, which got stuck precisely in the spot where the water was spilling out.

John rejoiced, thinking that we would not be discovered, but afterwards, the wall cracked.

We all turned around and noticed that the hole was expanding until it yielded completely.

In a short time, the school flooded completely, and the headmistress, soaking wet, caught

us.

A moment later, we were in her office, where the P.E. teacher joined us.

The headmistress gave us such a long lecture that at one point, I didn't listen to her

anymore.

The only thing I understood was that he was giving us a very severe punishment: "You will

stay at school until you have fixed the damage and dried all the water, even staying here all

night if necessary. And Mr Show will be there with you since he has not properly supervised

his pupils! "

Shortly after, we started to repair the damage, thanks to John's manual skills, and cleaning

up the flooded corridors while the annoyed Mr Show watched us sitting on a chair. We went

on for hours and hours, only finishing late in the evening, and by the end, we were all

exhausted and hungry.

The teacher had not said a word since we had started cleaning and staring at us distantly.

"What can we do now?" I asked, walking towards him. But I couldn't reach him in time

because I clumsily tripped over Anne's ball, which was still on the floor.

I ended up on the floor. I wasn't hurt, but unintentionally, I made him fall on me when John

tried to help me. As if that wasn't enough, Anne dived on us to check that her ball wasn't

damaged. It seemed to me that a shy smile appeared on the teacher's face, but it was only

for an instant because shortly afterwards he hurried out of the classroom.

"He's so weird", I commented.

At that point, the three of us decided to gather in our classroom to spend time. I tried to

overcome my shyness and asked John and Anne a question.

"Guys, I've been thinking... we don't know anything about each other even though we've

been classmates for several months now: why don't we talk about ourselves? About who we

really are?"

John spoke first:

"Well, yes, you're right! As you have seen, I love tools, disassembling and repairing things.

But I can never sit still, and I hate being assessed: that's why I refused to do the test.

Nobody can tell me what I'm worth. Only I know.

Anne began to speak after him:

"So, I've been doing ballet since I was five, but let's just say... it's not really what I want to

do. I would like to play football, but my parents expect me to be the principal dancer at "La

Scala". They say women have to be fine and polite; that's why I came with you: to prove

otherwise!"

They both looked at me and smiled, as if they wanted to encourage me, then I supposed it

was my turn: "I'm here because I was dragged along by you, but the idea of doing a test

about my physical abilities scared me... I'm sick of being made fun of for my appearance!"

Without realising it, I had raised my voice, and my face had almost turned purple.

I started to talk about how every day I found notes full of insults and threats in my locker,

not to mention the images I often received on my phone: photoshopped pigs with my face

and offensive memes.

I confessed everything: the fact that, a few months ago, I had stopped eating and ended up

in hospital because of it. I told John and Anne that I didn't feel good about myself.

Sometimes I avoided going out because I was afraid of people's comments.

At the end of my speech, Anne had tears in her eyes, and John was also very upset: they

looked at me in amazement. They knew I was being made fun of, that's all. Sometimes they

too had laughed with their classmates at unfunny jokes, but they couldn't imagine all this.

They told me that if they had known, they would have done something... they would have

talked about it to the teachers or defended me.

And one thing, in fact, they did immediately. They hugged me tightly.

For a moment, I felt understood and welcomed by people who, until the day before, I had

never expected to have by my side.

Just as we were talking, there was a sound of breaking glass. What had it been?

It was coming from the science classroom, so we headed there. There was a poster on the

door, which I could have sworn, was not there before. It was an advertisement for the

circus, which had come to town in the last few days. In the foreground, there was the

cheerful and colourful image of a clown who ... it's not possible: it was our P.E. teacher!

While we were staring at the poster in amazement, the teacher appeared in the classroom,

dressed as a clown.

Are we sure it was him? When we got closer, he answered us. Yes, his voice was his own!

He told us that his first job was as a clown. He loved to make people laugh, but he had to

abandon that career and devote himself to something else. At midnight, he went back to

being a clown every night, but only for five minutes. It was the only moment in which it was

possible to see him smile.

And his smile at that moment was dazzling: Show's expression was completely different

from that of the unhappy professor we had seen in the morning.

Suddenly, however, the lights went out throughout the institute. The teacher had

disappeared.

John tried to shed some light with his torch and illuminated a note, left on the desk, which

read:

"Circus Show ,3 Dante Street ".

Where had the professor gone? And why did we find that note instead of him? Were we in

danger in that school, alone, at night? Or maybe we finally had the opportunity to face our

insecurities?

ERASMUS MUST GO ON! Our virtual exchange (Italy)

 

Last year the final phase of the Creativity @work project was planned, but unfortunately due to the Covid -19 pandemic it was postponed until the end of this school year.

Due to the impossibility of travelling, it was not possible to host the students from Netherlands, Spain and Germany. For this reason, activities involving a virtual exchange have been planned.

In agreement with the coordinating teachers in the other countries, we decided to run several workshops on the theme of creativity and entrepreneurship. These activities took place online and, in some cases, in presence, depending on the restrictions of the various countries during this new phase of the pandemic.

The schools in each country worked in groups and the pupils in each workshop shared their work with the other countries, with the help of their teachers. The results of these assignments were then discussed from a comparative perspective to try to capture elements of innovation and creativity as well as similarity or difference.

The first assignment was a vlog creation. Students in this workshop learned how to make a vlog showing situations from everyday life (home, school, hobbies, sports) showing different schedules and habits. They also explained how their lives changed after Covid.

Then the vlogs have been collected by us teachers and we sent them to each other and distribute them among the students. After the vision they had to fill in a questionnaire about the vlogs of different students from the other countries expressing differences or similarities.

To stay with the theme of creativity and entrepreneurship, it was decided to make an interview with a creative entrepreneur. Students had to search for creative entrepreneurs in their neighbourhood, create some interview questions about that profession (in their own language), get in touch with the person and make an appointment for an online interview. This was an excellent opportunity for the students to meet people who have created a profession with commitment and by pursuing a goal. They also had the opportunity to ask the entrepreneur about how their work has changed with the pandemic. It was great to see that students were really enthusiastic and motivated, and discovered new ways to express their creativity.

Another important workshop was creative writing. The aim of this activity was to learn how to write a story in a group starting from some inputs given by the teacher, a story that could be appealing and suitable for teenage students.

The Italian students started the first part of the story leaving an open ending, the teachers then shared the first part of the story via email leaving each country the task of writing an alternative ending. In this way pupils had the opportunity to get involved in writing by inventing a story and working in groups. By making and discussing others' proposals, they all built a single story together.

The last assignment was a musical activity called “My confinement”. The outcome of this activity was a story per student written in English, in which students included the titles of different songs to express their mood during the first lockdown.

Again, the aim was to enhance their creativity as they had to use their ability to play with words, expressing feelings and moods by associating them with song titles but also with music.

The results of this work were then shared with the schools in the other countries, and it was decided to pick song titles known to all the students so that they could be understood better.

Certainly, working at a distance was in some ways a disadvantage compared to working in person. The pupils only met each other virtually and there was a lack of direct exchange, which would have made this experience even more meaningful, but the students showed great interest, participation and motivation.

The work presented by the pupils from the other countries aroused curiosity and developed a greater awareness of their own creative abilities.

Now you can see some of our works!

Memory Erasmus@work

Neuburg 2019. Vlog realized by German students