This summer, I had the chance to publish a text (“At school, hunger justifies the means”, The DutyAugust 8, 2024) where I respectfully asked the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, to rectify the situation and start food service as soon as the school year starts. To my great sadness, the students were not able to benefit from these meals. In addition, even snacks and milk cartons were conspicuous by their absence.
A disadvantaged school with a rating of 10 (the worst) is entitled to these services, but not from the start of classes. Why? It’s not serious!
Yet, I have recently seen several publications by politicians advocating a universal food system in schools. You know, ladies and gentlemen of the National Assembly, there are already measures in place in schools to this effect. And it seems that it is too complicated to put them in place in time for the first bell. Wouldn’t it be more logical to deal with an existing system that is not working well than with a hypothetical mirage?
Without wanting to impute any bad intentions to you, your words could give the impression that you are taking advantage of the situation at the expense of the children. Nothing to eliminate cynicism.
“Let’s play!”
Before the students arrive at the beginning of the school year, we teachers have three days of training to get set up, which is not enough to be fully prepared. “Let’s play!”, as baseball umpires say at the start of a game.
To understand how cumbersome the process is, you only have to put yourself in the shoes of someone who is on her first contracts. She hopes to take care of a group of sixth-year students: after all, she has taken in charge of a class at that level last year and has loaner materials. But she is assigned a second-grade class. She considers herself lucky not to have gotten a contract that would have taken her to three schools and three different grades a week.
The fact remains that she has never taught second grade, a level very different from sixth grade. “Drop ball, first strike.”
She has to make her classroom, which has been abandoned since June, a welcoming place, because the desks are all stacked on one side and the teaching materials usually hung on the walls are no longer there, as evidenced by the many blue sticker stains. There is also the welcome lunch and the meeting for newcomers to the school to prepare. Not to mention the time she has to take to talk to her new colleagues. All this to set up conditions conducive to her students’ learning from the first day. Where is the computer assigned to her class? What is her schedule? Where does she supervise? And if it rains, where will the students go during recess? The notebooks have to be prepared for the students. And it is a class opening, so there are not even children’s albums in her room. Oh, I forgot: she still has to plan the reception of the students for the first morning!
So far, no pedagogy mentioned. “Curve ball, second strike.”
She must also not forget the most important thing: the student. Does she have enough time left to discuss her new students with the special education technician, the psychoeducator or their teacher from last year? If she still works in this school, of course. Does she have enough time left to read the different intervention plans carefully, so as to correctly apply their recommendations? To find materials to differentiate her teaching and keep the fastest students occupied? Remember that this person has never taught second grade.
Ding, the bell rang. “Quick right to the heart of the plate, third strike. To the showers.”
Desertion
There is certainly a better distribution of time possible or conceivable. A school year is a marathon, and starting the race with a sprint can be energy-consuming and difficult to catch up with. It would be interesting to have turnkey boxes — turnkey classes? — for each level of education. When a person arrives, they would have everything they need to properly open their class and get going.
This box could contain activities for the first week, with materials (such as a children’s album accompanied by a good number of worksheets, to avoid the line at the photocopier), a suggestion for weekly planning, labels to identify desks, bins and lockers, etc. There is no university course that prepares you for this kind of situation, and yet…
It is a national emergency, as Normand Baillargeon so aptly puts it. We must retain the young and the less young, the precarious and the students. And above all, make the profession attractive, quite simply. So that we no longer have to say “Good evening, they have left!”
Oops, I picked the wrong sport; I’m out of breath and dizzy.