A committee of experts is currently working to approve teacher training programs. With this letter, I am addressing him. You who are looking into the question, I ask you to make room for me in your discussions. A place for me, and for how many others in my situation who, “late in life, discovered a desire to teach”, to quote the Report on the state and needs of the population 2021-2023 of the Higher Council of Education. People from diverse backgrounds who responded to the call of shortage and took up, at arm’s length, the torch that others let fall, exhausted, discouraged by often difficult working conditions.
You have to set foot in a classroom to fully understand them, these conditions which we are talking about more during this period of strike and hope for a better world for teachers and children.
Six years ago, therefore, I left my life as an actress, host of children’s shows, author of OSM children’s concerts and extracurricular theater teacher… to become a teacher of 2e year. A fake teacher who does her job very well, as I like to say from the start. Every time, my colleagues laugh with me. Because we all know that, in fact, I really look like the real thing.
When the qualifying master’s degrees appeared, I naively believed that they had been created for me. I was 42 years old, four children, and I had both feet in it! I had my class for two years, a warm letter of recommendation from my principal and photocopies of Christmas cards from parents who, not knowing that I was not a real one, thanked me for allowing their child to come back every school day more informed and open to the world… Bla bla bla… Great deals that went straight to my heart and made me believe that my application could not be overlooked. But no. I forgot the essentials. I don’t have a bachelor’s degree.
If I had started there, you might not even have read my letter. It’s going badly. It requires a lot of details that I have been tired of giving for six years. I’m seven courses short of getting a baccalaureate. Because at the age of 20, I chose to leave my drama program at UQAM to pursue acting studies at the Professional Theater School of Lionel-Groulx College. In the world of actors, this journey is commonplace. In my new reality, it’s a hindrance that I repeatedly come up against. I am not eligible for any training program that would suit my situation.
I analyzed all my avenues. I was ready to go and do my seven missing classes. Impossible. My university courses taken 25 years ago are no longer valid. Expired. We would have to start all over again. UQAM told me it had the ideal program for me: a bachelor’s degree to be completed while working and could extend over ten years depending on my convenience. I responded with sarcasm to the kind person who suggested it to me. Despite my now six years of experience as a teacher, I would combine work, studies and family life for ten more years to finally receive my teaching certificate at the age of 57… when I would have 16 years of experience and that I would be on the verge of retirement!
Last year, I really thought this was it. My new director (my precarious situation forces me to change schools regularly) recommended me to a new master’s program offered by TELUQ. School service centers had to recommend candidates they wanted to keep in their community while allowing them to obtain the background they need to legally access the teaching profession. She immediately thought of me. I was delighted. But no. Same stick in the same wheel. The school service center could not send my application. I didn’t fit into small boxes.
How many times have I appealed these decisions by ending my plea with this same sentence: how can I explain that I can have the necessary skills to teach, but that I am not recognized as having the skills to access training allowing me to legally practice a profession that I already do?
The shortage of teachers that we are currently experiencing in Quebec is an exceptional situation which, it seems to me, calls for exceptional solutions. I raised my hand to help. Since then, I have worked days, evenings and weekends to make my job worthy of its importance. I work in a disadvantaged environment by choice, because I like challenges and the children who have them. It seems to me that in the past (when I was 20), you could access graduate studies on the basis of experience. I have six years of experience in the profession for which I want to be trained. That should be able to compensate for the seven courses I didn’t take 25 years ago in a completely different field.
So, I reiterate my request to you: you, members of the committee of experts working to approve teacher training programs, please make room for me in your discussions. Tell me which door to enter to finally earn my title as a true teacher.
Good ! I must leave you. I’m going to put on my red hat and join my colleagues on the picket lines. Rain or shine, the teacher at heart that I am fights with my peers for the future of our children.