Viciomaggio. A small village near Arezzo, home to a school and rehabilitation center run by the Sisters of Saint Martha. On the gate, a bronze plaque reads: Centro Medaglia Miracolosa (more information about the Institute here, ed.). The setting hardly sounds impressive. Which is why what we found there came as such a surprise: we had never seen a center and school of this caliber before.
Experience has taught us what to look for in a school or institute serving children with disabilities—beyond the obvious: trained staff, quality equipment, clean facilities. We search for something harder to measure: human quality. And we've learned to recognize it through small signs, details that might seem insignificant to anyone else. The way children speak and carry themselves, even beneath shyness or the weight of disability. How the staff—teachers, aides, everyone—speaks and listens. The furnishings, however nice, can feel cold. But the artwork on the walls, the drawings, the ornaments—these tell the real story of a place better than any speech. Even the smell of a school, of an institute, can speak to its human character.
We spent two hours walking through the place with our eyes open: kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms, classrooms during lessons, the dining hall during meals, the workshops where the older students trained for work, the files documenting each child's growth and daily life. We could not find a single thing that disappointed us.
Read also: The Conditions for a School Like This
The Centro includes a kindergarten, an accredited elementary school, a vocational training program for adolescents, residential dormitories, and therapy, rehabilitation, and emergency services for handicapped children in difficult social situations.
The School
Our visit began in the classrooms. Classes have eight to ten students; two or three have disabilities. The teaching materials scattered about—handmade scientific instruments, terrariums, collages made from scraps of paper, wood shavings, and everyday materials, arranged with real elegance and originality—all of it pointed to first-rate teaching. The children were lively and engaged, but never chaotic. It was real work, done well.
Integration here is real in a way we rarely see. You could tell by the quality of work from children with disabilities and by the natural, almost easy way they moved among the other children—without the "special attention" and exaggerated kindness that usually betrays fake integration, the kind that has been the dismal result of so many school integration programs. The school charges no tuition. Children with disabilities, many from far away, sleep here during the week (most go home on weekends); the other children are from the village or come by school bus from Arezzo.
In the morning, children follow the standard curriculum. After lunch and recess, they divide into five mixed-age groups and choose from five rotating activities: music, typing, printing, theater, or science projects. Because each activity runs for two months, every group does all five before the year ends.
Children with disabilities are never separated from the others, except during their individual therapy and rehabilitation time. The center has specialists in physical therapy, speech therapy, and psychotherapy. The therapists work closely with teachers, so their work reinforces and strengthens the classroom instruction.
Typing has proven particularly effective—especially for teaching spelling and for children with dyslexia or similar disorders.
All the teachers are trained specialists, and you can see from the way they work that they care deeply about it. "We choose them ourselves," the director told us with pride, "even though that means we lose 60 percent of our public funding."
In one classroom, a teacher sat with four young children just beginning their group school experience. "You have to change activities as soon as they get tired," she explained, "to keep stimulating them and hold their attention. Building the ability to concentrate—that's the first step of real learning." Throughout the center, you noticed small touches of real intelligence and warmth. There were two small frames hung on the wall, their outlines traced with nail heads. There was a collage made with shavings from sharpened pencils. One was made by a child who knew only how to drive nails; the other by a child who wanted only to sharpen pencils. The teachers had taken repetitive, stereotyped gestures—the kind that trap children in their disability—and given them meaning and form.
The vocational training, which also serves a therapeutic purpose, happens in three workshops: ceramics, weaving, and leatherwork. Specialists trained at the University of Siena lead each one.
History
The Centro began as one of many charitable works of the Church, but with its own character: a real connection to the village and the land, and the practical spirit of an order founded "to work." "Sometimes I think we overdo it," Sister Maria said with a smile.
In 1917, during hard times for the countryside around here—times when peasant families had almost nothing—Don Natale Barbagli, born in the village, decided to build a home "for the children of that humble place... (who) in every sense have been abandoned."
The people of Viciomaggio came to love the Sisters of Saint Martha. They felt the sisters were part of the community—so much so that when the Institute needed a new building, the whole village pitched in, working for free, even on Sundays (the bishop had to give special permission). "We worked hard," the old men still remember, "and for nothing, even Sunday mornings, because we understood what was happening. We'd grown fond of the sisters who taught our daughters to sew and sing at Mass, who looked after the little ones while we were in the fields. They gave shots and bandages to people with Spanish flu and all the other sicknesses. They were always there for us."
The new house held a kindergarten, an elementary school, a clinic, and dormitories that, during the last war, housed as many as 120 children, through the darkest days when the fighting came to their door.
In 1957, with encouragement and help from the Province and various local organizations, they opened the medical-pedagogical institute "Medaglia Miracolosa." Its purpose was to provide "medical, psychological, and social services so that handicapped children could develop their personalities and be integrated into society."
The educators truly believe in the importance of relationships between children and they foster them
Respect and collaboration mark the center's dealings with the village and local authorities. The educators truly believe in the importance of relationships between children and they actively foster them.At the end of the 1960s and into the '70s, Italy was swept by cultural change. In the world of disability and mental illness, this meant closing institutions and pushing for school integration. Beyond ending real segregation and indifference, it also stirred up demagoguery and empty talk. The Viciomaggio center, being private and guided by religious principles, found itself blocked at every turn by the public agencies that were supposed to oversee it.
"We were boycotted at every turn," Sister Maria said, with both bitterness and a certain pride. "Our growth in recent years happened in spite of local authorities, not because of them."
A Life at Home
As she talked and explained, we kept walking. The kitchen—spotless, and smelling good. The dining room with tables for six or eight, set with cloth napkins. The bedrooms where children who couldn't go home slept: six to eight beds, properly spaced, each with its own blanket and stuffed animals and dolls. The bathrooms were generous in number, because children working toward self-sufficiency need time for personal care.
After washing up and dinner, our guide continued, the children had their private time to play. They could watch an hour of suitable television, or just play—and they'd never stop if you let them.
You could see these children were happy. But the director was insistent: "We do everything we can—and sometimes more—to keep families connected to their children and to make sure they go home. It's the possibility of a life at home that gives meaning to everything we do with them here."
When a child cannot go home, the deep understanding the people of these farmlands have for the work of the center often leads to adoption. In 1982 and 1983 alone, seventeen handicapped children were adopted by families from the area.
That is what moves us—that outcome, the spirit of this school, the human bonds you feel in every room, the particular care shown to these children. Real respect. Woven through with warmth. An understanding of their equal human dignity and their transcendent worth.
—Sergio Sciascia, 1985