Minister Bernard Drainville, for some time now, the words “innovation” and “innovation pole” have been constantly popping up in economic news. The announcement of the mega-factory project in McMasterville is a telling example.
We are looking to innovate everywhere these days. Except in education. However, this sensitive sector needs a real revolution, both in terms of schedules, working relations and the conditions necessary to once again promote this unloved profession.
It is with this in mind that we have written a memoir addressing some issues experienced in primary school and have sent it to you. It is now necessary to take the time to submit ideas to collective reflection to improve learning conditions and working conditions in primary schools. Thomas Edison once said: “It was not by perfecting the candle that I invented the incandescent lamp. »
Based on this principle, which has enabled major technological innovations, the education sector in turn deserves attention in order to rethink it in depth. We must stop renewing collective agreements with essentially the same clauses and the same conditions, we must stop operating schools without changing anything in their schedule and, above all, we must stop wanting to hire anyone under the pretext that There is a shortage.
Mr. Drainville, on this World Teachers’ Day, let’s take a few minutes to dream of a better world in education. The dream is the first step in imagining solutions that would make it possible to bring lasting changes to a system that greatly needs it.
Our first dream consists of rethinking the initial training of teachers in order to allow a final year under supervision with reflective feedback, like the training program for medical residents. We propose to pay these teachers in training without entrusting them with classes throughout the year. Just as you don’t throw young doctors into the lions’ den, young resident teachers should not teach all year round, because they need to be given the opportunity to stop and think about the problems they face. ‘they meet.
In this way, we hope that they will develop tools to persevere in their career. So, we want them to be able to supervise recovery periods or take charge of groups for a maximum of 30 consecutive working days, for example. Alongside their involvement, they would remain under the responsibility of an associate professor and an internship supervisor from the university in order to maintain reflective capacity throughout their final year of training. The same process could be applied for qualifying master’s students.
Our second dream is to create a schedule that allows for daily recovery periods, without extending the school day. How to get there ? By subtracting five minutes per period (including lunch time) to create a 30-minute period reserved exclusively for recovery. These moments of recovery would be beneficial for students having difficulties; they would make it possible to complete exams, an assignment, or to do a morning exercise, for a maximum of four students per period.
Meanwhile, the education residents (from the 4e year of training or qualifying master’s degree) or the teaching assistants in the class would be responsible for the other students in the group to enable them to develop personal projects.
Our third dream is to further help HDAA students (disabled or with adjustment or learning difficulties) by introducing artificial intelligence into the creation of intervention plans.
We hope that the databases which will be used for the future National Institute of Excellence in Education (INEE) will be accessible by AI in order to help create intervention plans which will propose effective means validated by research with regard to the determined problem. Thanks to databases interconnected from one school service center to another, all intervention plans could have access to the means deemed most effective according to current research. Consequently, we would standardize the means that can greatly help HDAA students.
Our fourth dream is to pay teachers who volunteer on committees. To achieve this, we propose that each school committee be subject to the development of annual SMART objectives. Our approach consists of eliminating the timing of the task and paying teachers on the basis of 35 hours per week, including three recognized hours at home.
Furthermore, we want to avoid penalizing teachers who do not have time to participate in committees for various personal and family reasons. These teachers would receive their base salary negotiated during the collective agreement.
Our fifth dream paves the way to allow educational advisors to return to teach in classes once every four or five years in order to lead by example in the use of evidence in the daily lives of students. A change of task which would be done without losing seniority, without jeopardizing his position.
Furthermore, it would be an opportunity to allow career teachers to become educational advisors for a year, the time to perfect their theoretical knowledge and to allow their fellow teachers to benefit from their field experience. Mobility made possible by the merger of the two collective agreements, so that educational advisors are considered members of the teachers’ union.
To conclude, our education system is going through an unprecedented crisis and the status quo is the worst option. Our proposals, presented in the form of dreams, have the merit of tackling concrete problems. While waiting for our dreams to materialize, we can only hope that the Minister of Education will listen attentively to these proposals drawn from our brief sent last July.
Time is running out to prevent the primary school system from further collapse.