We are on the eve of December 23 and I understand that I will not have the chance to see my students again before the long holiday during which capitalism is celebrated with pomp. If it were not for the cockfight between the state and the unions, a crisis unit would have been set up fairly quickly so that our students received an education despite everything. What was deemed so important during COVID-19 is no longer so important. The adversary is no longer a virus, but two entities with misplaced egos, who have lost sight of the good of the children. Hypocritically, some will say.
If we start again when we return from this long holiday break, I say yes, this break will have felt like a summer break for my students. Students affiliated with the Common Front will not have had the “luck” to be absent for such a long time and those who attend private school will not have had any respite at all, the “poor”. There is a lack of fairness in all of this and the smell of a three-tier school hovers over the conflict.
The more I hear that this strike is for the happiness of students, the more my uneasiness grows. The first week, that was certainly the case, but about twenty days later, it’s no longer the case. Before issuing the ultimatum of November 23 for the launch of this indefinite strike, we can assume that the discussions and meetings of recent months between the employer and the union side had suggested that there was no flexibility to one side as well as the other.
Why then have the members of the Autonomous Education Federation been plunged into this precariousness? Even if this unlimited general strike was voted unanimously, was it the first means of pressure to be used? To remedy the problems of an education system that affects the entire society, why put all the pressure on teachers? It’s sad to see teachers resorting to food banks to feed themselves, it’s true, but knowing that we already lack resources for those who are in need all year round, people who work for minimum wage with a family, for example, it is also shameful.
After these sacrifices, I can’t wait to return to class and no longer have to manage my students who will now be in special classes. I am also looking forward to putting back, after paying my debts, the little I have left of the salary increase into my TFSA, in preparation for the next strike. It’s irony, of course.
Where are we ?
Far be it from me to attribute bad intentions to this government, but where are we with the return to class? Do we even have a plan to make up for the delays accumulated by this strike? Will the teacher have to, once again, compensate for the ministry’s lack of vision? In addition to the announcement of the postponement of ministerial exams, what are we going to put forward for students who were already in great difficulty? It’s always the same people who suffer and I have the sad impression that, this time, there will be more students who will end up in this group of mistreated people.
It is in the small everyday gestures that we can truly see the depth of the love we have for the people around us; not just on Valentine’s Day for your loved one or during a strike for our students.
“Star Fairy, can you have my class again? I lost mine, quite without design. »
What I want, in fact, are working conditions that will ensure that no one will want to leave the profession. But choreographing a line dance between potholes isn’t going to get us there. We must denounce toxic management, we must stop working after the scheduled number of hours and transfer parents’ emails and unfinished corrections to management. We must denounce the management of budgets carried out in an office far from children and their needs, denounce managers who just manage Excel boxes, denounce accounting management disconnected from service centers and the State.
A teacher’s day is not always beautiful, which is why we all have to be a little rebellious so as not to let ourselves be indoctrinated by a duty of loyalty which, in reality, only serves those who are in power or in an office at a service center, not the children themselves. Our duty of loyalty goes and must always go to the students, period.
As the song says: “December 23, Merry Christmas, [M. Legault et Mme Hubert], hello ti-ass, we’ll see you again… in January.” At least, I hope so.