The School
The Institut Agricole Régional’s (IAR) main seat is located in northwestern Aosta, Aosta Valley’s Regional County Seat, at the foot of the mountains. The school was instituted according to Regional Law 1st June 1982 n° 12, for the purpose of “carrying out, in Aosta Valley, vocational-technical education and training, as well as research and experimentation in the agricultural field, also in reference to a mountain region’s typical requirements concerning environmental and territorial protection”.
The internal organisation includes a vocational-technical school complex, a research and experimentation centre and a farm operating in the livestock and vegetable supply chain, with multiple locations.
The educational offer includes a five-year technical education course in the agri-food and agro-industrial sectors, allowing the continuation of studies at university level, and a three-year vocational training course, preparing students to carry out operational tasks; the latter course leads to the acquisition of a qualification as agricultural specialised workers.
The school’s main feature is the presence of teachers parallelly conducting research and experimentation activities in the agri-environmental field: a guarantee of constantly up-to-date teaching, related to the local territory.
Another feature is the accessibility of the experimental and production research sectors’ resources for the conduction of teaching activities.
In support of educational activities
The Institut Agricole Régional provides:
• classrooms for daily lessons equipped with Interactive White-Boards (video projectors and screens);
• conference halls properly equipped with audio and video multimedia devices and tools;
• a classroom equipped for computer science lessons;
• a farm geared towards the zoo-technical, dairy, fruit growing and viticultural sectors, fitted out with all the necessary equipment and machinery for the transformation and conservation of agricultural goods (milk and dairy products, meat and derivatives, fruit, vegetables, grapes and derivatives), premises and facilities also suitable for educational activities.
Premises and services available to students
During their course of studies, students have access to:
• libraries (6400 volumes);
• vineyards (6,5 ha);
• a winery (50.000 bottles per year);
• orchards (4 ha);
• a fruit conservation plant;
• fields and pastures (35 ha);
• a vegetable garden;
• a medicinal herb cultivation plot;
• a mechanical workshop with a variety of machinery;
• two winter and one summer cattle-sheds (120 head of cattle);
• two dairy-farms;
• a shop.
The Boarding School
Adjoined to the Institut Agricole Régional’s educational offer, the boarding school has always been present as accommodation service since the school’s foundation.
The relationship between the school and the boarding school represents an added value.
Indeed, it is at the boarding school that two distinct spheres meet: the school, that represents the blend of knowledge deemed essential by our society to grow as citizens and to train professionally; and the educating community, where people sharing a living space meet, bonded by common goals. It is in this context that the study experience at IAR is fashioned.
The building
Since 1951, year of establishment of the school then called École Pratique d’Agriculture, the boarding school’s service has always been annexed to the Institut Agricole Régional’s building.
The building was refurbished in 1981, with an expansion of the structure, and has since maintained its features.
• On the third floor, there is an office for the technical biennium boarding assistants, a room for the assistant carrying out night janitor duty, and nine rooms for boarder students.
• On the fourth floor, there is an office for the floor’s boarding assistant and fifteen rooms for boarder students.
• On the fifth floor, there is the school’s library (Aosta Valley section), a small room for meetings and twelve rooms for female boarder students.
Accomodation
The Institut Agricole Régional offers a canteen service with the aim of providing a suitable diet to meet the students’ nutritional requirements, with the intention of promoting healthy and balanced eating habits. Several foods, such as meat, cheeses and fruit are partly produced on the Institute’s farm.
The canteen ensures daily distribution of the four main meals (breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack and dinner). In case of health conditions and/or food intolerances, particular menus can be prepared following advice included in each student’s medical file. The boarding school provides double, triple or quadruple bedrooms for boarder students. Moreover, male and female half-boarder or day students can use dressing rooms with showers and personal lockers.
Foyer de Mont Fleury
New premises were made available to meet the growing demand for full-time education, and the related increasingly large requests by families to enrol their children in the boarding school. The premises are a short distance from the school’s main seat and strategically located opposite the Montfleury farm, accommodating forty-five boarder students.
This building can also host educational institutions in the field of professional agriculture wishing to carry out cultural exchange experiences between groups of students, even from abroad.
Furthermore, in this seat there is a classroom dedicated to adult lifelong learning and professional training in the field of Aosta Valley agriculture.
Study guidance
According to the planning of school activities, classroom study in presence of an assistant is scheduled for first year students.
Study support in scientific subjects is also provided to students in the first two years, with the help of assistants that are former students of the Institut’s technical course; a mother tongue assistant is also available to help with the study of French. The boarder students of the third, fourth and fifth years can study in their rooms and/or in their respective classrooms. The presence of an assistant on their floor is also guaranteed.
Students are also allowed to study in their classrooms, before the beginning of morning lessons and after dinner, with prior permission from the assistants. Optional study for the classes or single students, educational outings for training sessions and research projects are also planned.
The boarding school, thanks to the collaboration with an external counsellor, provides weekly psychological support for both students and families.
Il Counselling
Different types of adolescents arrive at IAR. “Onions” are admitted to our boarding school: several layered years of choked up feelings, fears, livid and accumulated sacrifices, after at least eight years in primary and secondary schools, on the substrate of a more or less honourable past, with a threatening present and unknown future. We see them arriving in September with changing bodies and their families in their backpacks. Our educational relationship can only start after they have laid their burdens down and peeled away layers. It is hard to explain, but it often takes just one glance, a kind word, communication with a welcoming adult, a clear, confident, well-balanced statement to untie those entangled feelings, ease their moods and place them in a rigorously indicating present. Of course, these benefits will be temporary, the “onion” layers will grow back after leaving school and maybe tomorrow it will be necessary to start over again! But education is exactly this: starting again until we disappear as educators. If our knowledge and the pleasure of taking advantage of it do not take root on our boys and girls, in the botanical sense of the word, their existences will waver on an infinite void.
Of course, we will not be the only ones to dig those tunnels, maybe not being able to fill them, but those men and women will have spent the best years of their youth in our presence… and it means a lot! There would be much more to tell (memorable stories, nostalgic misadventures) about the struggles of growing up, intended as progressive abandonment of what was painstakingly conquered: but we do not have time to do so. Unfortunately we must note that, over time, experiences such as military service, summer stays and long holidays spent at distant grandparents’ houses, despite their limitations, represented important opportunities as a start to gaining autonomy and becoming an adult. Therefore, I believe it is important to underline the value of educational institutions such as, for example, boarding schools, that provide the opportunity to thousands of youths to be supported, helped, listened to and directed along the difficult path of growing up.
As a matter of fact, by limiting the coming and going between school and family, the boarder student’s condition, compared to the non-boarder’s one, has the advantage of placing the pupil in two distinct temporalities: school from Monday mornings to Friday evenings, and family during weekends. School setting on one side, and family setting on the other. Going to bed without reassuring parents with daily lies, getting up without making excuses for not doing homework, since it was done during assisted study with, at best, the help of fellow students or assistants. In short, mental rest: recovered energy that has some chance of being reinvested in study. Maybe all this is not enough to push the dunce to the top of the standings, but at least it makes it possible to live the present in itself. And it is precisely in the awareness of their own present that individuals build themselves, not by running from it.
Activities, workshops, events
Social and cultural activities
In collaboration with the school, several meetings are organised for the purpose of promoting health, legality, peace and development. On the other hand, leisure activities are planned with students: watching films and cinema discussion, listening to music, expressive and creative workshops, theatre and music shows.
Moreover, students are able to get information on the town’s cultural offer (meetings, exhibitions, shows and events), with particular attention to initiatives related to Aosta Valley’s history and traditions.
The school and the boarding school promote the participation in these activities through joint planning, also organising group or class outings. In addition, the boarding school makes a reading room for the consultation of magazines available to students as well as several Internet points.
Sports and leisure activities
In this area, the activities available to students are mainly focused on education to respect rules and to honesty through play and sports. Moreover, activities aimed at socialisation and recreation are also organised.
The boarding school makes available several sports and recreation facilities that allow the organisation of physical activities such as: training, competitions and tournaments or preparatory activities and sports orientation.
The games room, equipped with table football, table tennis, pool tables and satellite TV, represents an important area during recreation time.
Moreover, a reading room and a TV room reserved for small groups are available to students. Finally, the gym, two external pitches and the municipal football pitch are highly significant resources for the implementation of sports activities.
The pupils benefit from spaces and occasions to get to know and practice different sports and are, where necessary, supported and directed in the territory’s sporting environment through a network of contacts with associations and institutions dealing with youth activities.
Workshops
In order to improve the acquisition of specific skills, workshops such as the following are offered:
- leather, sculpture, wood carving and vannerie (wicker basket making) workshops: products belonging to local culture and tradition are handcrafted;
- music workshop: conducted by professionals, it offers the opportunity to deepen personal knowledge of musical instruments such as the accordion and the guitar, as well as of basic elements of music theory and reading.
