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HPL Center - High Performance Learning

HPL Center - High Performance Learning

Where students with cognitive frailty can better develop their skills

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Many students have learning difficulties that aren’t recognized in Italian legislation, unlike those with specific learning disabilities (DSA) and intellectual ones.

We’re talking about children with cognitive frailty, a condition in which the intelligence quotient (IQ) is between normal and mild cognitive impairment (according to the Wechsler scale, between 85/80 and 70/60): this cause a non-specific learning disorder, and often not too obvious, as well as emotional-behavioral and affective-relational difficulties.

That’s exactly what the Consult For People in Difficulty Association (CPD) focuses on, a pole of 62 Piedmontese voluntary associations committed to breaking the physical and cultural barriers that divide people with and without disabilities.

During the 2021/33 school year, CPD carried out a first experiment by proposing a free “HPL - High Performance Learning” course to 22 students aged 5-18, thanks to the contribution of the Piedmont Region and the space made available by the Educatorio della Provvidenza, in Turin.

Following this experimentation, CPD has launched asecond year of the initiative, supported by us, in order to define a replicable model that has a consolidated transfer process in other territorial contexts and a solid methodological foundation for scientific dissemination at national and international level.

In the HPL Center in Turin, young students have personalized specialist support at their disposal thanks to a course to start from the first grade so that they can learn how to avoid school stress situations and develop useful skills both in school disciplines and in everyday life. In collaboration with cooperatives, voluntary associations and third sector organizations, the Center also offers guidance in the choice of activities aimed at developing motor and social skills, considered complementary to the enhancement of cognitive ones.

In particular, the planned activities are:

  • Personalized courses for children with cognitive fragility aimed at developing listening and dialogue skills, attention control, awareness of one's own cognitive process;
  • Orientation in the choice of motor and emotional enhancement pathways;
  • Training proposals for 48 teachers of schools attended by the students taken over by the Center and another 100 teachers for distance learning;
  • Awareness and information meetings on cognitive weaknesses for all elementary schools and citizens of the cities reached by the project;
  • Counseling and guidance service on the rights of the minor in the "school-family" relationship aimed at local families.

In this path families have a fundamental role, actively involved in all of the process’ phases so that they also bring home the teachings and methodologies used in the Center, fully understand their child’s difficulties and, even before, know how to recognize even the most banal symptoms, such as slowness in understanding, in processing information, on difficulty understanding abstract concept or planning one’s activities.

It’s only with family awareness that we can create a growth path for these students choosing educational and extracurricular activities that will fill their gaps and that can involve them as much as possible to exploit their potential.

 

Details

City: Turin

Association: CPD - Consult For People in Difficulty ODV ETS

Intended beneficiaries: children

Contribution: up to € 235.000

Period: October 2022 - November 2023