the new health protocol told by a school director

It is 8:15 a.m. in Ercé-en-Lamée, it is still dark, a thick fog covers the small town of Ille-et-Vilaine and its 1,500 inhabitants.

It’s already the commotion for Elisabeth Derroisné, director of the elementary school: “Last night at 7 p.m., a phone call from a teacher who tested positive. The minister said he was going to put in contract workers… This morning, there is no one.” A mistress who has Covid-19 and the whole Jules Verne school adapts. “Hello Séverine, can you welcome my students all of a sudden?”, asks Elisabeth Derroisné. The director, who is herself a teacher, therefore entrusts the reception of her CPs to an ATSEM (territorial agent specialized in nursery schools). We have to manage the rest, “we must do the best”, she summarizes.

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Another concern of the morning: the parents of little Jules who did not consult the email announcing that the class is closed. “They have no connection. There are white areas here so they don’t get the information,” Explain Elisabeth Derroisne. “No, there is no Jules class. Can you go home?”, she tells him with a smile. Six students to dispatch in neighboring classes. A Monday as usual? “It’s becoming, it’s tiring.”

“I still have energy, but for how long? I don’t know.”

Elisabeth Derroisné, school principal

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The whole teaching team also finds itself in disentangling the true from the false of the certificates of the parents whose children are contact cases. “I have a student who has just arrived but who tells me that she has not done a self-test”, says a teacher. This is not the first time that this type of sworn document has been suspicious.

The CPs wait whileElisabeth Derroisné phones a student’s mother: “Joshua didn’t have a self-test?”. “No”, confirms the mother. “Perhaps that would be more reassuring for us, does that bother you?”, answers the director who understands that “Parents are getting a bit fed up.”

Before resuming her mad dash, Elisabeth Derroisné open the windows, “it is necessary to ventilate”, because the Jules Verne school was not provided with CO2 sensors, for lack of sufficient municipal budget. In a neighboring class, a teacher tells us: “We do what is possible, we do not necessarily seek to have learning objectives.”

“We try to make the day go well, we can’t do a miracle”.

A teacher

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At 1 p.m., “Tupperware” lunch in the teachers’ kitchen. No news for a possible replacement tomorrow. Elisabeth Derroisné worries: “How do I warn the parents? I’m waiting.”

National Education staff are again called to strike on Thursday 20 January. The director, who participated in the first day of mobilization last Thursday, will she be there this time? “Repeat the thing, no. There, you really had to tap your foot, say ‘enough’. Now, do it again every Thursday, I don’t see the point.”

Back to class for the afternoon. And then soon 4:30 p.m.: “The children have left with their parents or at daycare. And I go to the office to see if there is a new protocol”, ironically Elisabeth Derroisne. No new protocol but a clarification in an email from the academy inspector: a contract worker, out of the 8,000 announced by Jean-Michel Blanquer, will be assigned to the 36 schools in the district ofErcé-en-Lamee. “OI keep my fingers crossed hoping that there won’t be a teacher tomorrow telling me ‘I’m sick or positive'”.

“There is 20% relational and 80% administrative. It is the exchange with the parents that keeps me going”, slips the director.” “Is it still a good job?”, he is asked.“It’s still a good job” she concludes.