BITONTO – «Here, this is my new workplace». Vincenzo Daucelli, blue eyes and graying hair, shows with a smile a school desk cluttered with pens and notebooks. Degree in Pharmacy, scientific informant for 31 years, then again at the University to become an educator and finally at school, in the IC of the "Vitale Giordano" technical institute in Bitonto. The schoolmate is his son Giulio, a big boy of 14: all the energy of life is trapped in his adolescent body. «High functioning autistic disorder», explains Vincenzo, who chooses to leave his privacy with the «Gazzetta» to tell his innovative path.
Giulio, perfectly intact from a cognitive point of view and completely autonomous, has speech and behavior disorders that make a "shadow figure" indispensable. Vincenzo recounts: «I started studying with Giulio when he was 3 years old. I came home from work and spent entire afternoons with him. Even then I understood that the support teachers in the school, however competent, willing and available, they could never fully support Giulio».
In addition to the support teacher, the Italian law provides for the possibility of hiring private educators, authorized by school administrators and paid by families, to assist disabled students in their studies in the classroom. Thus, while Giulio attends middle school, already assisted by a professional educator, Vincenzo decides to return to the University and to obtain the qualification that allows him to follow his son to high school.
"Thanks to the infinite availability of the teachers and the principal of this school - comments Vincenzo - in this year we have experimented with a teaching model that is perhaps unique in Italy: a course of study perfectly calibrated to Giulio's needs".
Vincenzo thus became the communication bridge between the teachers and the secret world that stirred in Giulio. The boy follows equal programming, without discounts on times and contents, he goes to the exam, does his homework in class. The father, at his side, tries to contain his outbursts of joy and anger.
«With Giulio's teachers and classmates we are building something unique, exceptional, also because I am aware of the fact that not all parents are in the economic, cultural and human conditions to make the same life choice that I did I". That's why Vincenzo decided to tell his story. «After the first diagnoses, we listened to many doctors and did dozens of tests: many speculate on the desperation of families. In the end, after having tried all the treatments foreseen in cases like these, I wanted to try my way ».
The naturalist treatment, you call it. «We go out, we go to the cinema, we go shopping, we play the piano. Giulio learns life by living it, like everyone else. I am against associations, structures where children are "parked" with educators. It is the parents who should go to the educators, to learn what to do and how to behave with their children".
