Listen to the podcast Scuole di frontiera, tra solitudini e speranze on Apple, Spotify and Spreaker

The coronavirus does not seem to have made us all equal, even if we would like to think so. As far as schools are concerned, Covid-19, the disease caused by the Sars-Cov-2 virus, has forcefully highlighted the full extent of the digital divide that still exists between different areas of the country, and the difference in funding between individual schools — not only between north and south, but also between city centres and outlying areas. Listening to the voices of those who experience school from the inside has made it clear, once again, that school is not just about teaching, but about relationships and the building of one's own identity through those relationships.

A podcast about the stories behind the screens of distance learning

Without physical presence, relationships crack and cannot hold for long, the teachers say. Beyond the decrees, the controversies over the school-leaving exams, the debate about the failure to reopen schools in phase two, and the uncertainties surrounding the return in September, Covid-19 has turned every school into a frontier school, each with its own challenge to face.

Through the voices of three women teachers — very different in age, background and origin — the podcast Scuole di frontiera attempts to tell a part of what lay hidden behind the screens and monitors.

Three teachers, three schools, three stories

From the moment the government closed all schools at every level due to the Covid-19 emergency until the last day of school, Daniela Politi, with the help of her engineer husband, recorded a short video every morning from her flat in Naples to send to her pupils — to say good morning to them from a distance. "These children have an enormous need for normality," she says. "Our duty, especially in the neighbourhood where I teach, is to build new spaces of normality for our students, to share small daily rituals with them, to strengthen relationships."

During the same period, but roughly 900 kilometres further north, a primary school teacher, Elisa Rao, had to transform the forest-based school experienced by a class of 6-year-olds into a school confined within the walls of their homes. "Going to school and doing school means meeting with your body and your eyes," she says. "Because of the virus, everything that is non-verbal communication — or that at this age accompanies verbal communication in a very powerful way — has been reduced to a bare minimum."

Chiara Mottolese, meanwhile, teaches Italian and history in upper secondary schools in Rome, with a class from a commercial technical institute in Rome to take through their school-leaving exams. Over these months she has seen her students disoriented and confused, but also more sensitive and self-aware.

Covid-19 has changed the face of schools

Covid-19 has transformed the face of school as we knew it, but how exactly it has done so — beyond the role of digital technology — is something we have yet to fully understand. The virus has dragged schools off the radar of public life, and in doing so unexpected cracks have emerged, alongside possibilities, solutions and hopes, but also solitudes and fears.

This podcast tells stories from a female perspective, just as today's Italian school is predominantly female, with 83 per cent of its teaching staff made up of women. They are the protagonists of this season of challenge — one that is still entirely to be shaped, because no one truly knows what school will look like in September.