This week we are starting a new monthly series, “The Duty of Education”. The field of study is vast, from kindergarten to university. We would like to offer enriching contributions, whether they come from of researchers and practitioners in the field of teaching or other people who have thought to the state of our education system.
For a long time, upon hearing the comments of their fellow citizens – ordinary people, but also ministers – which demonstrated ignorance, prejudice, if not a clear lack of empathy, teachers often responded: come to a class! Come do our work! We are short of people!
We must therefore highlight the courage of many non-legally qualified teachers (an otherwise demeaning term, which should be replaced by “secondary lecturer”) who, very often, see for themselves all the richness, the complexity and, sometimes, absurdity being an integral part of our profession.
It is appropriate, particularly in this context of shortage and negotiations, to demystify this profession in which everyone is involved, for better and for worse.
The class
Above all, being a teacher means wanting to contribute to the development of each student entrusted to us, as unique, sensitive, unpredictable and forced (to be there) as they may be. It is wanting their good, sometimes in spite of themselves, and devoting all one’s thoughts, all one’s expertise, all one’s empathy and, often, all one’s patience to it.
But it also means having these students face to face within groups whose composition is becoming, almost everywhere, more problematic than ever, and which too often bear witness to an inequity whose impact weighs both on the student learning and teacher health. It is having the responsibility to teach these groups the same learning program despite the pace slowed by the brutal integration of students with serious academic delays or with various behavioral or learning disorders.
Fortunately, teaching is also, sometimes, the smile of a student, a spontaneous hug or the visit of an elder who will forget us less quickly than the others. This recognition is priceless, but it can never be enough to preserve a healthy balance throughout your career.
The society
From a much broader perspective, being a teacher means finding yourself stuck between the individualistic demands of certain parents and your duty towards society as a whole, and being able to see better than anyone how we often risk the progress of children. some in the name of the integration of others, due to lack of adequate resources. It is the frustration of seeing a fatal downward leveling in the name of the success of the greatest number, while seeing one’s judgment increasingly contested, whether by the student or by the parent, or even by one’s superiors. .
It means being confronted with gaps in the education of certain children and, for example, trying to counteract the terrible effects of the overuse of screens and social networks on cognitive development and socialization. It means observing and suffering more and more physical and psychological violence in the workplace, generally from children who, more than anyone else, need specialized and professional support which is becoming dramatically rarer.
But it is also, let us emphasize, having the support, often discreet, sometimes magnificent, of a number of parents who, convinced of the importance of our mission, mobilize around the schools or write us a simple note, gratifying us of a respect and esteem incommensurate with the empty words of the politicians who lead us.
The Ministry
Being a teacher also means being at the mercy of a minister who is always likely to justify any law in the name of an ideology or misplaced populism. At the same time, it means facing an employer-legislator who does not hesitate to threaten our working conditions and the stability of the system in the name of taxpayers’ ability to pay.
It is teaching under the imperative of results-based management (RBM), which requires an increase in the success rate, but not at any cost: this must be done at the lowest cost, that is- that is to say by adapting the teaching practices of teachers to the new reality of so-called regular groups, but in reality completely distorted. From there, let us underline it, the ultimate purpose of Bill 23: to stem protest and force practices, from an essentially managerial angle.
Ultimately, for the teacher, it means seeing his professional skills called into question again and again, even though he is forced to deal with small groups of the best students in the name of free parental choice. that have been forced for years by irresponsible and hypocritical policies, which discredit the entire public system and insidiously promote the commercialization of education. It is therefore, concretely, having to adapt to the tangible effects of a paradigm shift in the Quebec school system, namely the consecration of the three-speed school and the segregation that results from it.
The school team
Being a teacher means collaborating with other professionals who have the well-being of students just as much at heart, but in a completely different way. From the specialized education technician to the guidance counselor, including the psychoeducator, there is a wide margin between considering a young person in their individuality or within a group, in their personal and social development or in their academic learning. However, our work depends today more than ever on their ability to do theirs well.
It also means having to work under the relative benevolence of a school management, itself subject to a hierarchy of managers bound by budgetary obligations and ministerial objectives which, unfortunately, are too often more in line with the political ambitions of the school. ‘with the purposes of public education.
To be a teacher is to be more harshly confronted with the machine of a system than with its students.
But when within a school team, as sometimes happens, all the players come together and stick together, talk to each other, understand each other, respect each other and question each other together, this gives rise to sharing and extraordinary outbursts worthy of the locker rooms of major championships.
Agenda
Finally, being a teacher means taking for granted our ethical concern to try everything to help students who would otherwise be abandoned. It is to be told that our dedication is magnificent, the fruit of a true vocation, when in fact it is often a precarious balance between our professionalism and our own health.
These are sleepless nights spent thinking about our students. These are five days where we work six. These are ten months where we work twelve. It’s the unhealthy guilt of not being able to do more, but the alienating fear of not being able to say “no”.
Teaching takes time. Precious and immeasurable time to support, plan, evaluate, react, adapt. To take the necessary step back in order to improve our pedagogy and our interventions, even though we are almost always in the heat of the action, in immediacy, unpredictability and simultaneity, in front of 15 to 35 children who have a equal rights, but different needs. A time that we are denied in the name of efficiency even though we are told everywhere that our relationship with the student is proof of everything. It is this paradox that is killing the profession.
Teaching is both incredibly rewarding and exhausting, because at the very edge of our engagement sit students in front of us who are looking at us and no one else. But this privilege has a weight that becomes heavy to bear.
Because more than ever, the teacher finds himself dispossessed of his profession and thinks about the risk of compromising himself in it, and of getting lost in it, more than the happiness of flourishing in it.
By dint of finding himself in front of broken, unreasonable groups, over which he has less and less control, and against whom he is promised help which never comes. In front of students with very different problems from those of barely ten years ago, coming from families whose habits have profoundly changed. Suffering from policies which disintegrate public services and being constantly called into question by management supposedly focused on results, but whose performance and profitability in reality motivate the main orientations.
The teacher is today robbed of his time and his judgment.
It is urgent to listen to him, to truly and concretely give him the confidence he deserves. After all, as he faces cohorts of students year after year, he is one of the first witnesses of society – perhaps even the most important -, acting with the greatest benevolence towards the children that we entrust to him, in order to raise them a little more each day. The teacher remains the first to know his students and to question the best way to help them progress through his lessons and his example.
When a single teacher finds himself, in one way or another, unable to do his job, whether he is still in class or not, let us never forget that it is a multitude of students — and our society — who pay the price.
A price that the government nevertheless seems ready to pay if we rely on current employer offers which, without exaggerating, are likely to aggravate disaffection towards the profession.
Because being a teacher also means being gifted with a posture and versatility that are highly sought after in these times…
Suggestions ? Write to Paul Cauchon: [email protected].