Michela: “Have you ever thought about how a student feels behind a screen?”

Dear school,

I am writing to you even though I am not the best student in the world, I am not the smartest and perhaps I am also the least suitable to write you this letter. Dear school, you are not a nightmare as they want you to go through.

Dear school, you are the love that blossoms among the desks, the friendships that are made, the classmate who makes a funny joke, the teacher who asks if we understood, we who answer yes and we did not understand. It is waking up in the morning, finding yourself with your companions, enter the classroom and know that you are facing a step towards your future every day.

School is not memory, they are not pages of history, they are not mathematical expressions, they must not be the tears and anxieties for a task or a question. The grade, for what it is worth in a school average, is not you.
In 10 years you won’t even remember the names of most of your professors. What will remain with you is your understanding, it is the ability and duty to be citizens and persons. It is not remembering when Hitler exterminated the Jews, but it is understanding why those poor people were killed.

I know it’s difficult. I know we are being labeled as Generation Z which is probably just a bunch of kids taking advantage of an education where they can’t be fully controlled. But have you ever thought about how a student feels or how a teacher feels behind a screen?

Every now and then I get lost looking at the faces, I would like to tell my classmate that Greek seems like an alien language to me but I turn around and I’m alone. My friends are at their house, and we’re all probably thinking the same thing. It’s 6 hours: hours in which you look at a screen and hear a robotic voice. They are the “homework” done at home, to which you are never recognized anything, because at home it is easy to copy. These are the questions in which you have to look fixedly at the camera, because if you look sideways it means that you are reading.

They are the “stay home, do nothing” and we find ourselves even more tight afternoons in our small rooms with a philosophy book in hand. It’s frustrating, and I’m talking about teachers, students and all school staff. Some may not have realized that there is a global pandemic outside. We didn’t realize that there are people outside who still cry for their lost loved ones. There are still nurses who have been working all day for a year now, breathing through a mask. There are doctors who see people die every day. There are the workers, the restaurateurs, the artisans who have had their life’s work closed, and they too stare at a screen.

Maybe we should all put ourselves in other people’s shoes, instead of looking for a culprit, someone to blame, someone who is doing better. There is no culprit but the virus itself. We are human, perhaps this is what we cannot understand. We have limits.

Today I want to speak to students and teachers, or anyone else who will be able to read this little letter. I will not say that everything will be okay, I will not make promises that will not be kept. But what I would like is that we all be a little more human, a little more attentive to the frailties of others. It is difficult, but it is not by attacking ourselves that we will end this “war”.
Never belittle anyone or any office. We are all in the same boat thinking that the world is rowing against us. Most likely we are rowing against it.

Michela

You can send your letter to the school at: [email protected]. The letters are published in the special Dear School, I am writing to you …