“It was an incredible surprise”, smiles again Florence Béguignot, who ran the Jean-Monnet primary school in Vincennes (Val-de-Marne) until June 30, the day of her retirement. That day, and despite a few drops of rain, she was treated to a very special farewell: the singer Julien Clerc came to pay homage to her in person, with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, singing his song Miss in front of the teachers and the 300 pupils of the school. The images of this meeting were released by the artist’s team on Thursday July 7.
This Thursday, June 30, therefore, Florence Béguignot attends the children’s recital, in the schoolyard, when she hears another voice, a little more serious. “My heart only took one turn”she recalls – an emotion visible in the images. “I had already been entitled to a superb retirement pot, but this was an incredible surprise, I was very moved. I do not think that many teachers have been entitled to such a departure.” The icing on the cake, the director and her colleague were invited to the Olympia to attend Julien Clerc’s concert, this time on a stage, next December.
This surprise was prepared in the greatest secrecy. “At the beginning of June, I told a student mother that we would not see each other at the start of the school year, because I was retiring”tells the director to franceinfo. “Eight days later, I received a phone call asking me if I liked Julien Clerc, I said ‘of course’! But I thought that the parents of students would simply give me a gift”. But a colleague takes care of organizing everything behind the scenes – which is not easy when you have to collect the agreements of all the families for the image rights of the future video. “I saw absolutely nothing. The children learned the song each in class, and had never sung it all together.”
“When we tell the children it’s to please the headmistress, they know how to keep a secret.”
Florence Béguignot, former director of the Jean-Monnet school in Vincennesat franceinfo
The song Miss was not chosen at random. Dedicated to teachers, it appears on the singer’s latest album and was written by Didier Barvelivien. “These are lyrics that speak of these people to whom we owe everything. Because they are the people who bring us back into life”explained Julien Clerc last year, at the microphone of Europe 1. These few words, it is true, pay a beautiful tribute to the teachers of France: “Mademoiselle who taught me reading and poetry, the pretty fables of La Fontaine, Victor Hugo and Paul Verlaine, you have embellished my life.”