“I’m going ahead with my complaint and the juvenile court will take care of making the kids understand the seriousness of what happened.” Talking about her is Maria Cristina Finatti, the science teacher hit in the face by pellets fired from a compressed air pistol, by a group of first-class students from the Itis «Viola Marchesini» technical institute in Rovigo. The fact, which occurred on 11 October last, was filmed on cell phones by the students who then spread it on social media. Two fourteen-year-old students of the five involved, the boy who had shot and the one who had filmed everything, were promoted, one with a 9 in conduct. “A moral slap,” said the teacher, defining herself as “deeply disappointed.”
Professor, why do you speak of disappointment and a “moral slap”?
«I won’t go into the merits of the decisions taken by the class council of this first one because I am no longer a member of it, but it seems to me a lack of consideration for my person. A serious act transformed into a “game” and now further diminished with promotion. That day my mask saved me, I could have lost my eye, but whoever is a victim is a victim, the school system does not save you ».
What do you intend to do now?
«I’m happy to be able to go ahead with the lawsuit, I don’t want to penalize the boys but I was denigrated with their video, I never, ever thought they would film me again. And then it seems that I make it all up, what I say is distorted. I always try to behave correctly, maybe I even have too much empathy with the kids because the students get too familiar with each other nowadays».
But did you expect the students to fail because of the events in October?
“Yes, I expected that. Or at least I expected the school to underline the seriousness of the event with low marks in conduct. I had participated in the first quarter of the class council on the first two months of school, before I was removed from that class. I don’t know how good they were and it has nothing to do with good grades. Certainly the choice to promote them is wrong. I have nothing against my colleagues and I won’t go into the merits, they know the progress made by the kids during the rest of the school year. But it is as if the first two months, September and October, the ones in which I was their science teacher, had been cancelled”.
If she had continued to be their teacher, faced with good grades in tests and questions what would she have done?
«I would have changed my teaching method, interfacing and personalizing it according to their personalities, because it is part of my mission as a teacher. In hindsight you can’t talk, they should have shown me their closeness and not acted like they were almost in mourning. If they had come to apologize to me immediately, I would not have started with the complaint to the whole class. I’ve always believed in the weakest and I’ve helped them even when colleagues told me why I tackled courtly issues or speeches with special kids. This is to underline my extreme sensitivity.
But can a class council fail a student who does well in school, for an episode like the one that happened to her?
«Yes, he can do it, as happened in Abbiategrasso where they rejected the student who stabbed his teacher. It didn’t happen here in Rovigo».
Have you ever seen the pupils who shot you at school? What did they tell her?
“I met them, perhaps, I don’t know because I greet everyone at school and I was only there for a few weeks in that class and I don’t physically remember them”.
Do you hope in the juvenile court because you believe they have not already paid during the school year?
«They had meetings with the psychologist and that was it. I won’t give up the complaint and go ahead, they still have to pay. Now I hope that the Juvenile Court has its own path and that the kids take a bogeyman and realize — them and their parents too — that it is with negative experiences that one improves. Mothers and fathers would always like the good for their children but it is with hostile experiences that one learns to live. I don’t understand why we teachers always have to pay or be blamed.”
There are those who say that it is not right at the age of 14 to ruin the school career of the boys, by rejecting them even if they are good and since they have repented.
«I know that an episode like this can ruin a teacher’s career, while the kids are being helped. What we teachers suffer and pay for is always greater as damage.