Overnight in September 2019, Simon Bucci-Wheaton became the teacher of a group of sixth graders. Without any experience working with students, he responded to the call of a school principal who was desperately looking for a classroom teacher. The shock was brutal.
The apprentice fell in love with the profession. He felt at home in this school in a disadvantaged neighborhood, but he quickly noticed the shortcomings of the system he was entering. Day after day, he recorded in a notebook the small and big irritants of a teacher’s life – which his colleagues with more seniority no longer see or prefer to ignore to protect their mental health.
After four years in primary schools, Simon Bucci-Wheaton had accumulated so many grades that he decided to write a book about them. This collection, But why school? Questions and thoughts from a teacher who wasn’t one, is coming out in bookstores these days. Seventeen personalities also present their vision of the education system, including Normand Baillargeon, Yoshua Bengio, Yvon Rivard, Léa Stréliski, Claudia Larochelle, Steve Bissonnette and others.
“I kept the flame for the profession, but the honeymoon ended quite quickly,” summarizes the author in an interview. He undertook part-time evening studies to obtain his teaching certificate.
Simon Bucci-Wheaton says in his book that it is often too hot in his premises and that there is no thermostat to regulate the temperature. Opening windows in the middle of winter is not just to ventilate the room in times of pandemic, it is also to avoid suffering from the heat. And to evacuate meal odors, because the students eat dinner in class. Mosquito nets let bees in. Drinking water contains lead.
The recruit also sees the shortage of staff: exhausted colleagues go on sick leave, classes find themselves without a teacher and students in difficulty are left to their own devices, due to lack of support from a remedial teacher or an educational technician. specialized.
Parents and little ones
Classroom management is one of the main difficulties. “If you have three or four students who have behavioral problems, who get up at any time or who bother others, can you really help the little one who has dyslexia? At the end of the day, if you can’t help your students, you don’t feel like a good teacher,” says Simon Bucci-Wheaton.
The latter was surprised by the disinterest of many parents in the education of their children. He noticed that parents did not follow up on his messages warning them of significant shortcomings in their child. Some will even blame the teacher if he or she informs them of their child’s lack of effort in class. However, parents can become one of the main factors in student success by joining forces with teaching staff.
“There is no framework at home. We leave the children to their own devices and see what happens in class: learning difficulties linked to behavioral problems,” says the teacher. He dreams of a school system that would set the bar high for student success, that would instill a “culture of effort” in children (and perhaps parents). He is convinced that society itself should “have significantly higher expectations of the education network.”
The quality of the French of students and teachers themselves should seriously worry the whole of society, according to him. “We are producing functional illiterates,” laments Simon Bucci-Wheaton. Even at university, they have trouble writing or understanding a text that is not complicated. It is urgent that we redress the situation, otherwise we will hit a wall. »
He believes that French teachers in primary schools should be language specialists, as in secondary schools. The author is surprised that the only primary school specialists teach English, physical education or the arts. Why not French?
The author suggests other solutions that are off the beaten track: designate two managements per school, one which supervises teaching, the other which manages the building and the working environment. Or even depoliticize the educational regime, which would be entrusted to education experts. He welcomes the creation of the National Institute of Excellence in Education, announced by the Legault government.
Towards a Parent 2.0 commission?
While writing his book, Simon Bucci-Wheaton asked himself if he was complaining for nothing. If he was too negative. After all, there are also great stories in education. But he concluded beyond any doubt that his findings were realistic. He believes the school system barely gets a passing grade. The negotiations concluded recently between Quebec and teachers are a step in the right direction, but they cannot alone solve the problems of the network, according to him.
The author agrees with Normand Baillargeon, philosopher of education and columnist for Dutywho signs the preface to his book: 60 years after the Parent commission, Quebec is ripe for a new collective reflection on the education system.
“The last time we thought about these issues together, teachers were smoking in schools and there was no Internet! We must ask ourselves if our school is still up to date. And what we can do to improve it. Otherwise, it’s like putting a plaster on an open fracture. »