A Student From Ukraine in the Italian Education System

 The lights dim in the school theatre. On stage, the students of  the class are not just performing the Odyssey; they are redefining it. The scenery has been specially adapted to ensure "scenic accessibility," allowing Lara, a student who uses a wheelchair, to move freely alongside her classmates. This is not simply a play; it is the culmination of a daily reality where physical and cultural barriers are systematically broken down.

In another corner of the classroom, a Kamishibai (paper theatre) is ready. Here, the story of The Little Prince is told not only through words but through Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), ensuring every child, regardless of verbal ability, is a narrator.

Lara is a student with Ukrainian background who is repeating the fifth grade of primary school due to numerous absences following a long post-operative hospital stay. The teachers, in agreement with the family, had decided that she should remain for an additional year in primary education in order to support further her growth. This repetition allowed her teachers to know her better and to build a climate of acceptance and collaboration among students.

The teachers started by looking at her  Individualised Educational Plan (IEP) in order to understand her needs, with the aim of fostering the maximum possible development of her potential and the acquisition of new skills. The teachers’ main concern at the beginning of the school year was to provide for differentiated objectives in all dimensions, with particular attention to personal autonomy, communication, socialisation, and essential cognitive skills.

When the teachers started to work with Lara, their main focus was her impairment and spent a great deal of time to understand her functioning through an enormous amount of papers:

• Diagnosis: Prematurity and perinatal hypoxia, agenesis of the corpus callosum, optic atrophy, spastic diplegia, and mixed specific developmental disorder.
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• Functioning: Lack of independent walking (use of a wheelchair) following orthopedic surgeries (osteotomy and techtoplasty); severe delays in developmental milestones.
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They also identified a series of structural and cultural limitations related to physical obstacles and partial accessibility, the complexity in managing mobility (wheelchair) during educational trips and transfers and the different cultural understanding of the notion of inclusion and disability in education within the Ukrainian country of origin in comparison with Italy. 

After a few weeks of classroom observation, the primary teachers began to look at what the student could do and what she had in common with her peers rather than focussing on her impairments only. 

The experience of including a female student with spastic diplegia and optic atrophy—recovering from major orthopedic surgery —represented an opportunity for profound professional growth. It required me to rethink teaching through an inclusive and multisensory lens. The challenge of welcoming the student into a new class group during a repeated school year called for constant, structured synergy with the support teacher and the teaching assistant.. This synergy  transformed the drafting of the IEP (Individualised Educational Plan) into a collaborative effort aimed at ensuring complete accessibility across all teaching staff. I learned to calibrate instructional proposals so that the disability was not a limitation, but a condition to be integrated into the collective journey. This enhanced my capacity for pedagogical observation, enabling me to adapt materials and learning paces to the child's specific visual and motor needs while ensuring she could access knowledge as smoothly and comfortably as possible.

The relational dimension was the true beating heart of our educational approach: the class welcomed the student with extraordinary sensitivity, demonstrating great maturity by supporting her daily and standing by her with patience during the most critical moments. Her constant participation in all activities—from the school play to out-of-region field trips—cemented a climate of collaboration and active engagement. Managing the logistical and relational complexity of these events allowed me to refine my organisational and problem-solving skills while simultaneously strengthening class cohesion. Her peers spontaneously developed tutoring and solidarity skills, turning diversity into a valuable resource for everyone. Thanks to her ability to act as a "bridge" among her classmates, the student managed to transform her vulnerabilities into a social bond, enriching the entire group with her vitality. This journey confirmed that inclusion is not a mere formal requirement, but a relational process in which mutual support breaks down barriers and builds a true learning community.

The fifth-grade classroom started to use a series of tools that could create a more inclusive didactical approach to teaching and learning. In particular the following tools were used:

1. Kamishibai Project: "Travelling with the Little Prince"

Kamishibai is a Japanese visual and narrative tool that fosters concentration and logical sequencing. This tool was used within the regular classroom and lesson to ensure that all children could take active participation in the process of learning the story of the ‘Little Prince’:

2. • Multimodal Approach: Valued different intelligences (verbal, visual, spatial, interpersonal).
   • Authentic Task: Students produced an original story to present to a real audience.
   • AAC Integration: The use of Augmentative and Alternative Communication allowed maximum accessibility for the student with a disability and others with complex communication needs.




UDL Principles:

3. • Representation: Information offered in multiple formats (audio, text, images, AAC).
   • Action and Expression: Students expressed ideas through writing, drawing, painting, and drama.
   • Engagement: Working toward a public presentation strengthened responsibility and motivation.

​    2. "Odyssey" Theatrical Performance

The fifth-grade class staged an adaptation of the Odyssey with the goal of valuing all students and making the experience inclusive. The theatre was a preferred modality to support non verbal and verbal communication within the classroom in order to support an accessible curriculum for all students.

1. • Active Participation: Demonstrated that every student can participate regardless of physical abilities.
   • Breaking Barriers: The environment was adapted for scenic accessibility, and classmates provided active logistical and relational support.
   • Skills Enhanced: Students improved expressive capacities, autonomy, responsibility, problem-solving, and empathy.
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The experience proved that inclusion is a daily way of living school, not just a distant goal.

1. 3. School trips:

Touch and physical action make abstract concepts visible and concrete for all students, particularly for Lara. Teachers decided that their didactics required Hands-On & manual Engagement. Lara’s learning was enhanced by physical interaction—manipulating materials (e.g., clay, water, scales, recycled objects, plants, art supplies), and by engaging touch, sight, and spatial awareness alongside significant peer relationships. 

The key facilitators to such didactical approach included the organisation and the carrying out of school trips. Lara, for the first time, was able to take part in school activities outside the school and outside her house. She started experiencing the outer world and learned about it together with her peers.  The most famous trips included a visit to the Quirinale Palace. The class visited the Quirinale, participating in activities designed to learn about Italian institutions. After Rome, the teachers organised a trip to Florence (by train), the class visited the most famous tourist places including the Uffizi Gallery. The train journey was an excellent choice for logistics and mobility. The  most significant trip, however, was the one to Ostia Antica: an immersive and multisensorial experience where children moved through ancient streets and touched materials to reconstruct the past from sources. Even with partially accessible paths, it was possible to build a personalised and significant educational experience, fully realising the right to study.

Lara in Secondary School

The transition to secondary school presented new challenges because secondary school teachers initially focused only on motor aspects and physical barriers rather than the student's complexity. In particular, my colleagues and I focused on architectural and communication barriers. However, we were able to identify possible solutions to such barriers thanks to team work and the support of the ancillary staff. Some examples include:

The main entrance ramp which is steep and requires significant physical strength to manage safely. A school collaborator now assists with this.

The organisation of secondary school involves frequent moves between classrooms, which are difficult due to narrow corridors and overcrowding. Support teachers now anticipate these moves to avoid cognitive overload and noise

The student's guardian is a native Ukrainian speaker and sometimes we all struggle to understand mutual requests. A daily diary and the electronic register are now used for rapid communication.

Issues with the school bus schedule caused the student agitation; this was resolved through a formal request from the Principal to change the bus times.

A critical issue arose regarding lunch administration, as the student requires significant assistance to eat safely (to prevent choking/insufficient chewing). Support teachers initially handled this until teaching assistant hours were modified to cover the mealtime.

 Some additional reflections include feedback from the secondary school teachers, the school principal and the local health unit psychologist.

Support teacher n.1

Having the teaching assistant with us—who bridged Lara's transition from primary to secondary school—is fundamental. From her, I learned how to approach the student in a gentle yet constructive and effective manner. Meeting the primary school teacher reassured me that we are on the right track with Lara  and that the horizon of her potential holds promising prospects.

Adding value to all these relationships are the general education subject teachers: they often prove willing to experiment, share ideas, and suggest engaging activities that create concrete inclusion within the class group.

Observing and listening to Lara's classmates, and watching how they all interact with one another despite the natural liveliness of their age, has repeatedly proven to be the key to rewarding and inclusive learning. The female students who came from her primary school immediately told me about the performances Lara took part in, singing and playing instruments. I find that creativity is the true key to fostering engagement, sparking curiosity, and encouraging new, unexpected connections.

Support teacher n. 2

Throughout this inclusion journey, I had the opportunity to engage with a reality that led me to re-evaluate my educational beliefs and methodologies. The most significant change was the adoption of an extremely flexible and person-centred approach. Observing the student's growth and engagement—thanks to personalised strategies and the creation of a positive classroom climate—reminded me that it is fundamental to listen to and value each individual's differences, recognising the potential of every student regardless of their difficulties.

This path has strengthened my awareness that inclusion is an ongoing process of listening, adapting, and collaborating. It inspired me to continue viewing my role as a teacher as a facilitator of opportunities and a promoter of a school environment that is as fair and respectful of diversity as possible.

Being able to turn what might appear as a hurdle, an obstacle, or a problem into a creative and driving force was one of my key strengths during this school year.

Together with my special education colleague, I found myself—and continue to—face many critical issues that require us to constantly adopt a pivotal (or central) position, acting as the hub of an inclusion process that, however, cannot be delegated to us alone.

Organising field trips highlighted several challenges related not only to architectural barriers, but also to continuous demands from the mother/guardian, which made planning and managing everything effectively quite complex. I experienced firsthand how difficult it can be to establish an effective and productive relationship with all stakeholders in the educational sphere—such as Local Health Authority professionals who, due to their absences, were unable to provide the necessary information to adequately support the student in certain activities, leaving me with a sense of isolation, frustration, and helplessness.

However, working in synergy with other figures along the inclusive path made me feel like an "emerging stone"—a stepping stone that offers support and footing to anyone attempting to cross a stream to reach the opposite bank, enabling the creation of connections and the resolution of problems.

The realisation gained is that, while recognising the importance of professional training for a teacher, one can never overlook the need to maintain a critical spirit and an ever-active, thinking mind. It is fundamental to never stop questioning foundational axioms, as this is the only way to ensure a professional and personal journey that is genuinely mindful and open to continuous improvement.

This experience broadened my professional perspective, making me more sensitive to the needs of every student and more determined to build a learning path that can be truly accessible and meaningful for everyone by questioning myself and reinventing my approach to promote a constantly evolving pedagogy.

Quoting Ivan Illich, it reminded me of the importance of "finding that courage which is the sole chance of salvation in a situation of panic: the courage to stand still and look around for a way out, different from the one toward which everyone is rushing because it says 'exit'."

The reception and clinical-social care of a foreign minor with severe disabilities, fleeing the tragedy of war, represented a complex human and therapeutic experience that profoundly redefined the approach to personal care.

In the initial stage of institutional involvement, the mother showed immense difficulty in trusting the system, displaying initial mistrust, marked resistance, and a partial lack of compliance that became the key to understanding the entire journey. We faced a picture of cumulative and multidimensional trauma, where the shock of war and cultural displacement was layered on top of the pre-existing, daily burden of managing a severe disability. For a mother who has watched every certainty collapse in her home country, the impact with a completely unknown institutional, bureaucratic, and linguistic system can generate an experience of profound threat, transforming the outside world into a place perceived as intrusive or judgmental.

In this delicate relational stalemate, linguistic-cultural mediation proved to be much more than a technical tool: it served as an essential clinical and transcultural framework. It was not merely a matter of literally translating medical or regulatory terms, but rather a complex process of "emotional" and anthropological translation. The intercultural mediator provided the dedicated neuropsychiatry professionals with the fundamental keys to deciphering the cultural codes and the meaning of disability within this family’s history. Simultaneously, this allowed us to offer the mother a clear, predictable, anthropologically attuned, and highly protective sense-making framework regarding everything that was taking place.

As a psychologist actively embedded in this operational complexity, I believe the true clinical turning point stemmed from the ability to activate authentic, synergistic, and deeply flexible networking between the specialist clinic and the school institution.

Even before treating the patient, our first therapeutic act was to "care for the relationship" between the services themselves, weaving a protective matrix of connections. This required the professionals involved to "think together," moving beyond sectoral silos and rigid bureaucratic boundaries to co-construct an inter-institutional "common mind." Through this dialogue and by leveraging the specialist certifications issued by the public healthcare service, the school was able to conduct a thorough and early assessment of the child’s needs. The school institution responded with extraordinary warmth, preparing a tailored educational and relational space, and pairing the minor with specialised support staff who facilitated a non-traumatic integration.

For us professionals, working as a network meant acting as a protective, containment-providing "social skin" for this vulnerable family unit. We understood that a rigid application of procedures would only confirm the mother’s sense of threat; on the contrary, our institutional flexibility provided that fundamental holding function which disarmed the destructive anxieties of trauma.

It is within this transitional space of trust and safety that we witnessed, over time, a profound relational repair: a "resistant gaze," rooted in fear and defence, progressively transformed into a "conciliatory" and collaborative one. Ultimately, the resilience of vulnerable family units is not an innate trait of the individual, but the precious outcome of a cohesive, educating, and caring community that knows how to protect, accompany, and reassure.

‘She cannot be in a regular classroom’. 

A story of a student from Ukraine in the Italian education system.

Lara is a 12 year-old student from Ukraine, escaping the war with her adopted mother. The student was registered in the final year of the primary school (grade 5) but the mother did not want the child to attend the school. When I found out that the student was not coming to school I decided to contact the guardian and asked her the reasons why Lara was not at school.

The guardian argued that the child, as a result of her severe impairments, would have been better educated in a special school. Lara’s diagnosis reported a severe cognitive disability, a physical disability (she is a wheelchair user) and the lack of any verbal communication.

The guardian’s position was very clear. There was no point for a child with such severe impairment to go to a regular class with other students without a disability. She mostly wanted Lara to be registered in the regular school to obtain the residence permit and her migration status. Both documents are required if you want to live and work in Italy. Back then the guardian had no real intention of sending her to school as, from the guardian’s perspective Lara would not have been able to take part in any school activity. She, instead, reclaimed her right to a special school/class and complained with me about the Italian education system which lacked a differentiated and alternative pathway for students with severe disabilities.

Despite the Ministry of Instruction and Merit in 2022 had passed a series of legislative measures to safeguard the registration and participation of Ukrainian refugees in the Italian school system, in terms of didactical (tools, materials and technological supports) as well as administrative shortcuts, there was no mentioning of specific support for Ukrainian children with disabilities.

Children with disabilities were required to present a certificate/diagnosis of disability, issued by a medical commission in order to be provided with the support that they may need. To put it simply, the inclusion process was conditional upon the issue of a medical diagnosis which could guarantee that students with disabilities could be provided with all the additional support that they needed depending on the severity of their impairment. A  medical diagnosis that could be issued only to students with regular papers that required a few months to be made.

Students with disabilities requiring additional support as a result of a diagnosis have the right to three different types of provision:

Support teacher. This staff is assigned to the classroom where the student with disabilities is registered and placed. The support is provided for some hours of the school time depending on the type of diagnosis

Teaching assistant/learning assistant is assigned specifically to the individual child as a one-to-one ratio for a number of weekly hours depending on the type of diagnosis

Communication assistant is assigned to individual children with sensory impairments or with non verbal communication in order to help the students (Augmentative Alternative Communication)

Technological devices and aids (Braille, reading support aids etc…)

When Lara came to Italy, she did not have any documentation with her. Although Lara was clearly a child who required extra resources, the lack of official papers prevented the school from obtaining the additional support staff and resources envisaged by the law.

I had to create a new networking system to obtain the necessary resources and support the process of inclusion of the Ukrainian student with disabilities. Her participation required a series of actions to be taken both inside the school (didactical and organisation modifications) as well as outside the school (local health unit, social services, transport services and other municipality services). My first attempt was to promote a culture change of the way in which the guardian made sense of regular schooling for her child with severe impairments. I then started to create a series of agreements in order to provide Lara with the support she needed despite the lack of administrative and official papers, or rather, regardless of the absence of the former. My point was that she had to be in school and she had to be provided with all necessary resources. I therefore engaged the local health unit and triggered the development of a new support procedure to ensure Lara’s with all the necessary provision. I still recall the many phone calls and meetings I had to arrange in order to overcome the many red tape and systemic barriers that prevented a child from obtaining the provision she needed. 

Once I convinced the guardian that Lara had to attend a regular school everyday, I began to get in touch with the local health authority in order to trigger the process of inclusion by ensuring the child could be diagnosed and seen by medical staff at her house in order to obtain additional resources (support staff, teaching assistants, aids and other special material). In particular, the school strongly needed a language mediator that could support the family and help them to obtain the official papers and diagnosis. 

Luckily, the Italian Ministry of Education and Merit has passed a series of measures to speed up the process of providing language and economic support to students from Ukraine. Thanks to such legislative measures, the local health unit and the school could count on a language mediator throughout the process of registration and issue of medical diagnosis.

Our most important achievement, however, was that most Lara’s teachers started to move their focus of analysis from what was not working within the child to what could be improved at the level of teaching and school organisation to respond to the child's specific requirements in terms of learning, accessibility, relationships and communication.

The primary school teachers, for example, started to focus on how to establish positive relationships with adults and peers; how to support enthusiastic participation in creative and theatrical activities.They even started to evaluate the use of UDL (Universal Design for Learning) by selecting the Kamishibai, the theatre and the school trips projects that requires the use of  multiple means of representation (text, audio, images, AAC), expression (drawing, acting), and engagement.

For the secondary school teachers the process of inclusion was more difficult, I believe because they had to face a  more rigid and structured organisation of teaching and assessment procedures. Nevertheless, despite the lack of support from the family and the difficulty of impacting on the less flexible school schedule, not to mention the limited resources and the lack of aids, they have managed to strengthen their capacity to modify the taken for granted teaching and schedule routines to ensure Lara’s participation in learning.