STUDENTS’ DISCOMFORT: WHAT DID ITALIAN TEACHERS SEE DURING THE PANDEMIC EMERGENCY?

. Educational poverty is a lack, a non-correspondence between needs and answers, and it concerns both the individual and the context. The manifestations of educational poverty encountered by teachers in their daily work during the pandemic emergency (2019-21) were explored. The prior objective was to encourage teachers to reflect on their experience and to tell "what they saw" at school. This paper focuses on the educational fatigue experienced by teachers when they are face to different kind of students’ discomfort. A semi-structured on-line questionnaire was submitted to all secondary schools’ teachers in Varese (Italy). Several areas were investigated: - Students’ discomfort - Family’s fragility - Local context opportunities - Teachers’ self-efficacy - Teachers’ training needs. The data collected (n=365) put in evidence widespread and heterogeneous manifestations of discomfort which affected negatively the class managing (45.2%). Even though there are many teachers who stated that they "did not see" them (%). The teachers do not feel fully prepared to face these situations and therefore they ask further training in this area (75%). They know also little about the educational opportunities in the local context; consequently, (this is our hypothesis) they do not perceive them as allies in educational poverty prevention. Students discomfort behaviors often hinder the profitable performance of teaching activities and, in turn, generate discomfort in teachers; these behaviors have been interpreted in their semiotic meaning, that is, as messages of a "not well-being"; in this perspective, adults must manage to listen to students’ voice in order to grasp the meaning of their behaviors even before going in search of strategies to solve them. The current "educational crisis" corroborates the need to promote teachers’ educational identities, by offering stronger training, in order to promote students development and educational achievement. Furthermore, this educational challenge cannot be tackled individually but collectively, empowering community networks inside and outside school.