Growing Up in the Suburbs: Stories of Adolescents at Risk and of their “Maestri di Strada”

Starting from the hypothesis that the malaise of adolescents in school, the formative failure and the drop-out phenomenon are connected to the crisis of the adult function and of the hyper-modern school, which is exacerbated in urban contexts already degraded and violent, and that they constitute factors of psycho-social risk, the no-profit Association Maestri di Strada and the University ¬Federico II have experimented for a long time educational strategies in the suburbs of Napoli (Moreno et al, 2012; Parrello, 2014; Parrello, Moreno, 2015). Projects have been started in the schools and in the youth centers of the area which involve about 300 adolescents and 30 operators between educators and psychologists every year. The objective is to revive in every adolescent the desire to learn and grow, especially in the phase of transition from Middle School to High School, which is believed to be the one at higher risk of abandon. The methodology, inspired to principles of cultural psychology (Vygotskij, 1934; Bruner, 1996; Rogoff, 2004) and psychoanalysis (Winnicott, 1965; Balint, 1958; Bion, 1962; Jeammet, 2008; Kaës, 2012), is based on the axiom of the articulation of social and psychic and on the centrality of the meaning: that is why the care of human relations (which extends to the families) and the use of workshops that valorize integrated learning (for example, theatre) are thought to be fundamental, along with group and observation techniques. The efficacy is judged both by quantitative, scholastic indicators, as the diminution of nonattendances and disciplinary actions, the improvement of academic performances, the ‘respectable’ passing of final exams, and by qualitative indicators observable in the fieldwork, in group experiences and in the life stories told by the protagonists and the operators of Maestri di Strada who connect with them. These stories often move the educators deeply: at school, many teachers have trouble handling the ‘impact’ because they lack adequate containment and reflective supports; that’s the reason why the operators of Maestri di Strada use regularly the multi-vision group (Balint, 1957; Pergola, 2010) led by a psychologist in the presence of an observer. During the last school year (2015-2016) many projects have been started, as Project E-Vai and GiovanixiGiovani for in school-drop-out, drop-out and NEET teenagers. The context is that of the eastern suburbs of Naples (neighborhoods of San Giovanni, Barra, Ponticelli), currently going through a feud between clans of camorra: the themes of criminality and violent death have left a mark in the educational work. In this paper are presented the results of the textual analysis of the corpus composed of 62 reports of observation of the multi-vision groups and of the corpus composed by 30 narrative reports of the operators of Maestri di Strada. The six categories emerged from the semantic-structural analysis of the observation reports can be grouped in two macro-areas: a. methodological devices (cluster: school – group – observation) b. people and events (cluster: stories of teenagers – families – change and resistance). The individual stories of the adolescents show the relevance of gender, of the level of maturity of the family, the importance of the bond with the educator, the rebirth of self-esteem, the script and the discovery of other Possible Selves, the limit.