not replaced despite their work stoppage, these teachers provide classes remotely

Many establishments struggle to find replacements in the event of the absence of a teacher at the start of the year. Anxious to continue the program, some of them are providing the class remotely.

“A teacher in front of each class” : this is what the government promised at the start of the school year in September. However, a few days before the Christmas holidays, positions remain unfilled in many establishments which also struggle to find replacements in the event of a teacher’s absence. So, some teachers do what they can to avoid “let go of their students”.

In Haute-Savoie, at Saint-Jean-d’Aulps college, several of them continue to work, despite taking sick leave or maternity leave. This is the case of Camille, a French teacher. Arrested for three weeks in December to undergo an operation, she was not replaced: “I suspected that we wouldn’t find anyone for those three weeks, so I gave them work to limit the impact of my absence on their work in French.”

Exercises that students find online on the Pronote software: “The 3^are, I gave them a patent-type assignment. I asked them to post part of it to me anyway on Pronote, either written on a computer or by taking a photo of their handwritten copy. I read the copy and then I send them a correction.”

No applications to ensure replacements

All this, therefore, during her stop and she is not the only one! Her history-geography colleague, who left on maternity leave at the beginning of December, has not been replaced for the moment. She will not return until March, and in the meantime, she also gives elements of distance learning courses. But Camille makes it clear that they were not forced, nor even encouraged by the principal of the establishment: “With my colleague, we really did this spontaneously. And we are rather discouraged by our heads of establishment: they mainly encourage us to rest.”

“In no way did they ask us to do this, it’s really a personal initiative.”

Initiative welcomed by some parents. The history and geography teacher on maternity leave received around twenty messages of thanks. Camille, however, is well aware that it should not be up to them to “manage the shortage”: “It creates a bit of dissension because we do it for the good of our students because it’s something that concerns us. And in fact, we take the risk of being criticized for it by our colleagues or our spouses. Mine threatened to change my code so that I could no longer access the ENT, so that I could not work and so that I could rest!”

Several unions also disapprove but within the establishment, they confirm it to us: there are no applications to ensure these replacements. The geographical location does not help, in this fairly isolated valley close to Switzerland, where living is expensive. The rectorate, for its part, indicates that it is fully mobilized to find a lasting solution.