Giving voice to one of the representatives of the Italian Feminism’s historical years, this essay tells about a return to the roots of one’s own writing memory characterized by encounters, learned readings and experiences of a country world before the “escape” to Milan. After several years a group of women writers from Ravenna invited the author to come back to those places. This experience develops the belief that «a person who leaves his/her own roots – especially if they deal with land, servitude, obscure efforts and are storyless – is aware of always bringing along the traces hidden in emotional shakes, in gestures, in voice intonation, in the inmost recesses of a word or a sentence».

Through “education clinic” (which views education beyond any abstract, intellectualistic and self-righteous approaches), training for educational and formative professions – at school, in the educational-social field, or in relationships of help, care and assistance – often appeals to writing as an elective device. The author retraces the pathway that through writing allows everybody to be aware of his/her own set of fantasies, projections, wishes embedded in the educational experience. The aim is to reach a real “transforming understanding”,that is a deep grade of understanding of the latent dynamics affecting one’s own formative practices

This essay proposes a theoretical definition of the kind of writing produced in the school field and illustrates such related features as connection, representation and memory. On this background, the written text stands out as an important source for the history of the school cultures and of the real didactic and pedagogical practices. Moreover, a typological review of such writings is provided in order to tackle the topics of spontaneity and the discipline of early school writings with a particular reference to the exercise books. In order to better understand the history of school from its agents’ viewpoint (i.e. students, teachers, parents), the aim is twofold: to show the complexity of those meanings which involve the school writings and to point out some suggestions developing from its use.

The authoritative historian of pedagogy retraces his own pathway to writing traineeship recalling the early images of autobiographical memory. He thinks back to his classmates and to himself at the desks, while he was silently writing tidy sheets of ruled papers for primary classes under the teacher’s watchful eye. As his narration proceeds, the author develops even sensory memories related to the pen-nib and the whole set of tools used by children, born in the early nineteenth century, in order to learn to write.

The author tells about her own experience of teaching collective and individual poetic writing with children. It refers to the practice of “making poetry together” by using the formal structure of Haiku, that is the briefest poetry in the world. It is simple, essential, minimalist and symbolically stands out as a flash pulling down the wall which separates us from things. This is an example taken from the teaching practice which can be narrated simply and effectively

As an “expert” in teaching to write and as a high school teacher, the author focuses on the most frequent difficulties which students come across when dealing with such complex competence as writing. This contribution traces the pathway to the empowerment of argumentative skills and also provides a fruitful example emerging from the concrete reality of school methodology.

The author gives a detailed account of an experience of functional writing which was carried out within the course of the Italian Language. The object of study was the didactic genre called “back cover” and composed of a title, a summary of the book, the author’s brief biography and some technical details. This fruitful experience ended and came up with the production of about eighty texts which were written, corrected, re-written and reduced to fifty seven final texts. Moreover, it also helped the author to stress and to point out clearly several obstacles faced throughout the learning pathway and affecting the grammar, syntactic, lexical and variety level, the style itself of the performance and the application of the teacher’s tips

The author argues the canonical meaning of creative writing and the distinctions usually proposed with respect to functional writing. Indeed, the differences are much less marked than what the labels may suggest. In order to support her theory, the author discusses three specific issues and carries out an analysis of advertising as a case study. This text-type is an emblematic example of the close connection between creative and functional writing (and the related grammars).

A conversation gives the idea for reflecting on the relationships between scientific writing (of general pedagogy and philosophy of education) and living and thinking in Eboli, that is the author’s homeland (in the province of Salerno with 35.000 inhabitants). How does one write from Eboli? Eboli will be conceived as a metaphor of solitude, pain and thinking.

The phenomenology of travelling by train is achieved and narrated by the author who portrays travellers calling one each other at the stations. The latter become a dream of ever closer stops. The coaches follow one another very fast and overlap in the cursory eye of those people who follow the rhythmic movement which recalls the one of modern dance.