“Manon the dreamer” wants change

(Saint-Joseph-de-Beauce) “For the 31 years that I have been teaching and since my first day, I have been called Manon the dreamer or Manon the artist. The one who has utopian visions of education. But I believe in change and I want students to experience what they learn.”

When she talks about her students, her commitment to making her French classes more lively, her love of human beings and the importance she places on listening to what teenagers have to say about school, Manon Caron’s eyes shine even brighter than the many decorations that light up her classroom.

Aged 54, happy in her early retirement teaching yoga and living in harmony with nature, in the warmth of a small isolated house whose windows offer her the spectacle of the wild animals that inhabit her forest, she decided last winter to accept a replacement contract at Veilleux secondary school, in Beauce, with young people in the fourth year of secondary school.

Seeing her arrive in the classroom, with her round and emotional voice that automatically captures attention (an asset when you have to teach grammar rules!), her students quickly understood that they were dealing with a teacher who was anything but ordinary.

“I think colorful is really the right word,” says Cédric Ruel, who agreed with four other classmates to return to school before the end of the holidays to meet The Press“She is happy as always,” adds Noémie Pouliot, which is confirmed in unison by Émile Breton, Elizabeth Gilbert and Jasmine Drolet.

Break the mold

On this August afternoon, they wanted to come and tell us the story of the oral presentation that Manon – as she is called here, without the usual “madame” at school – had entrusted to them last June. The subject: reinventing school. And there is no shortage of ideas.

Sitting cross-legged on a desk, with her way of speaking that mixes a succession of anecdotes with bursts of laughter, Manon explains that she asked the students to present to her as a team what they would like to have, “THEM” – a word that she pronounces with force, which explains why it is written in capital letters – as a school environment.

For their presentations, her students could review everything (to hell with collective agreements and rigid ministerial standards), except that they had to maintain the same number of teaching hours per year. “I suggested that they review the educational recipe so that they could show me how it would be good to learn, all types of learners combined,” explains the teacher.

And the results lived up to her expectations, she hastens to add, as evidenced by the next tab.

A school for all

Manon Caron understands young people who struggle to listen to five hours of classes a day, sitting in front of a teacher. She is suspected of being somewhat hyperactive herself, while she admits to flitting from one project to another, just as she has studied and worked in her life from New Brunswick to Abitibi, via Sorel-Tracy, Trois-Rivières, Sherbrooke, Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, and now in Beauce.

“I have a kind of energy that propels me, it doesn’t make sense,” she laughs.

Last spring, in a writing exercise, she asked her students to write a letter to themselves to reflect on who they are and what they want to become. Manon then collected the envelopes and promised to mail them the letter in five years. This year, she wants to teach the agreement of color adjectives with the works of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, who she is passionate about.

“I have always been convinced that school benches are not made for three-quarters of students, especially boys. The students told me this in their presentations and I agree with them. Their message is simple: they want things to be done differently,” summarizes the teacher, well aware that some of the ideas submitted by her students would be difficult to implement in the current school system.

An engaged dialogue, sometimes even spicy

In her classroom, Manon Caron takes a resolutely active approach and tackles sensitive subjects without embarrassment. First, the edge of her window – wide enough to sit on – is comfortably furnished with cushions. It is easy to imagine students sitting there to work, especially since the windows open with a bird’s eye view of the green fields bordering the Chaudière River.

Then, to teach certain concepts in the program, such as reasoning and argumentation, she agrees to continue the dialogue with students who clearly want to provoke when sensitive subjects are discussed.

Last year, the issue of sexual orientation created tension in her class, as the students and Manon were discussing homosexuality, having herself acted as a wedding officiant for her daughter and her then-partner. One student raised his hand to declare that he was homophobic. Since the class was about argumentation, she asked him to come back later with rational arguments, rather than emotional or belief-based ones, that would explain why, in his opinion, no one should be gay.

However, a few days later, the student in question instead arrived in class with a group of friends who introduced themselves as “apostles” of homophobia. By Manon Caron’s own admission, the class was tense afterward. Representatives from the GRIS-Québec organization, which raises awareness among young people in schools about the realities of LGBTQ+ people, later led a discussion in the class.

Émile Breton, who was present in class, says that confronting tensions and not sweeping homophobic statements under the carpet allowed the students to evolve and communicate calmly afterwards.

“In the end, we mostly had a lot of questions and a lack of knowledge on the subject. I think it’s up to the school to explain that to us, and it’s the type of teaching that allows us to develop as people,” he says.