After thirty years of secondary school teaching, Stéphane Boulé kept the flame alive. His eyes shine — or cloud with emotion — when he talks about the joy of being in front of a class. You read correctly: this teacher has fun in this system where staff members are dropping like flies, where pieces of ceiling fall to the ground and where young people “in difficulty” lack support.
In all modesty, Stéphane Boulé wanted to deliver his tips to last in this profession, which generally makes the headlines for the wrong reasons. He has just published Long-term teachers. Go to school, be useful and cultivate the flamepublished by Éditions XYZ.
The work is part of a collection of essays which aims to “repair” the world by going beyond the simple observation that things are going badly. “A laboratory to think about new solutions to see life differently. An exploration of possibilities to plug the cracks in our lack of humanity,” specifies the publisher.
The poor education network really needs ideas that go off the beaten track. This is precisely what Stéphane Boulé is proposing: a fresh look at a system in crisis which nevertheless manages to educate more than 1 million students per year. “At arm’s length”, as the expression goes. In an imperfect way, obviously. In adversity. But sometimes with joy. In happiness, even.
“This book is a bit like a coffee that I offer to a friend in difficulty,” says Stéphane Boulé, joined on a virtual platform in his French class at a private high school in the Quebec region.
While saying these words, at the end of a 45-minute discussion, the professor’s eyes were moist. The emotion rises. He has been teaching for three decades in this same school – which he attended as a student -, apart from a one-year break to lend a hand to the Ministry of Education. And the passion remains intact, despite the countless difficulties in practicing this profession.
Stéphane Boulé does not live in a world of unicorns: he notes that the education system is going through a real crisis. “Premature departures from the profession are more important than ever. Since the pandemic, it’s clear that needs have exploded and that people feel overwhelmed and end up leaving,” he says bluntly.
In the lion’s den
The author is convinced that the unions are right to strike to demand better working conditions. The government must invest to get the network out of the turmoil, but Stéphane Boulé pushes his thinking further: according to him, teachers must take a personal approach to survive in the profession.
“If we wait for the system to move, we will wait a long time, and we can only be disappointed,” he said.
The first rule of this experienced teacher is to always remember that teaching is a very difficult job. He believes that even student teachers should be introduced to the most complex groups to understand the demands of the profession. Aspiring teachers need to know early on what they are getting into.
All young teachers note with amazement the difficulties of managing a class. They need on average seven years to become comfortable in this profession. No wonder that between 25% and 30% of new teachers leave the profession during the first five to seven years of their career, underlines the author.
Even though he has always worked in a subsidized private school – an environment whose challenges are different from those faced by his colleagues in ordinary classes in public schools – Stéphane Boulé came up against “the pitfalls that most teachers experience , wherever they work: groups of difficult students, lack of resources, intransigent parents, heavy workload, long working hours, fatigue, discouragement. I too thought about leaving the profession.”
No to perfection
Inspired by the Stoic philosophers Seneca, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, the teacher reminds us that it is “useless, even destructive, to let oneself be undermined by what does not depend on oneself. Rather, we must strive to see what is, without judgment, and use it to develop the virtues so dear to the Stoics—practical wisdom, temperance, justice, and courage.”
This approach led him to renounce perfection. This takes a lot of pressure off him. Stéphane Boulé cites the British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, who in 2006 put forward the concept of “ good enough mother » (good enough mother): a woman who is present 30% of the time to respond effectively to the needs of her baby is an excellent mother.
This theory also applies to teachers, believes Stéphane Boulé. According to him, it is counterproductive to work late evenings and weekends if it is to aim for perfection. He thus delivers perfectly correct PowerPoint presentations to his students, but without stunning graphic effects that would have required hours of fine-tuning taken from his personal time.
A taste of effort
In the same vein, the teacher does everything possible for the success of his students – this is the ultimate goal of every educator – but he avoids carrying the fate of the young people in his class on his sole shoulders. “Even the best teacher in the world would not be solely responsible for the success or failure of his students,” says Stéphane Boulé.
“It’s the student who learns. Not the teacher. The young person must commit to learning. I go even further: it is essential that parents support us if they want their child to succeed,” he adds.
The opposite happens too often. Parents become outraged if their child gets a bad grade. And some young people have everything they need to learn, but suffer from a “motivation disorder” for which the only diagnosis is to redouble their efforts, notes the teacher.
He tells a revealing anecdote: the students who show up most often for lunch periods are generally the ones who get the best grades. They are “engaged” in their studies. But not everyone has a taste for effort these days.