Editor and committed citizen, the author has taught literature at college and is president of the governing board of a primary school. She co-directed and co-wrote the essay Shock treatments and tartlets. Critical assessment of the management of COVID-19 in Quebec (All in all).
The transformation of school boards into service centers has clearly demonstrated this to us: under the guise of decentralization of powers, it is rather a concentration which has taken place, coupled with a disappearance of dissident voices, with the abolition of commissioners. With PL23, we continue to ensure that the Ministry of Education has an increasingly long arm (perfect for holding a microphone to sing a song from Cowboys Fringants in an awkward manner, you might say). Top-down management is reinforced at several levels. One wonders if the government did not take advantage of the attention paid to the negotiations last week to pass the bill without much fanfare…
We know: professorial autonomy is already shaken. While the government, within the framework of negotiations with the Common Front and the Autonomous Federation of Education (FAE), continues to shed light on salaries, the teaching staff reiterates that what stumbles and sends the desertion rate of the profession in the ceiling (stuffed with asbestos), these are the conditions. “I wouldn’t go back there for a million a year”, we frequently hear from the mouths of ex-teachers who are on their last legs.
These days, teachers are mainly demanding better conditions. Class composition is one of them, but beyond and below this complex request lie other, simpler requests, the reasons for which are refused. One of them: the right to telework during certain educational days. You read correctly.
Pedagogical days are working days for teachers, who no longer count the hours worked in addition to the 32 paid weeks, no one questions this. Of course, there are important school team meetings that take place during these days. But there are also training courses which, according to many dedicated and sensible teachers, lack relevance, when they are not downright insulting to intelligence. PL23, with its “one size fits all” approach, risks making this problem worse by rhyming “excellence” with “interference” – as evidenced by the outcry from unions and various education professionals towards it.
Thus, teachers who practice in an environment where non-allophones are an exception have had to follow training entitled Awareness of allophone students in French-speaking schools; training that they could have provided themselves! Others, elsewhere, were forced to attend a presentation on giftedness, even though they had participated in an entire conference on the issue in previous months.
On Folio, the continuing education offering platform of the Montreal School Services Center, the “Psychology and wellness” section contains particularly edifying descriptions. Let’s take this one, on mindfulness: “Are you experiencing stress or anxiety? Are your emotions overwhelming you? […] We will explore together what mindfulness means and how to use this powerful tool, through practical experiences, which will offer you the opportunity to distance yourself from your emotions, sensations and thoughts, and thus once again become the captain of your life ! »
The boat of education is sinking, the whole system is broken, but become the captain of your life again! Here, what we say to the teachers is: “your classes are overflowing, a third of your students have an intervention plan, the TES is on sick leave, a speech therapist is missing, because the last one went to the private, but: learn to control your stress, for the love of it, pull yourself together and take the rudder again”!
This is nothing less than cognitive hijacking (or gaslighting). We let the boat sink due to underinvestment and shaky reforms, and now we are shifting a systemic problem onto the shoulders of individuals. It’s like giving the crew Titanic a bottle of putty to repair the hole in the hull while splitting it with an ax with the other hand.
Fortunately, this training is not mandatory, but with PL23, nothing prevents it from becoming mandatory. Discernment has not been distributed evenly, as evidenced by certain blunders committed against predominantly female professions, such as that of the managers of the Quebec University Hospital, who, during the 2020 Holidays and in the midst of a pandemic, gave 7,000 nurses a basket gift consisting of lubricant, dye to camouflage gray hair and wax to remove bikini hair… To see how Bernard Drainville is disconnected from the field and plays, like his boss, “Daddy is right”, the teaching staff does not there is nothing to be reassured about.
The government shunned the negotiating tables last weekend. Contemptuous. If teachers stuck to the 32 hours they are paid for each week, the system would collapse. A very dedicated teacher told me that she had already accumulated 450 hours of unpaid corrections since the start of the year! To improve in writing, his students with great difficulty must practice. These practices must be accompanied by constructive comments. And that’s a long time.
The graduation rate does not jump by magic: behind each successful student, there are teachers who put in a lot of time (for free), knowledge and money out of their own pockets. Teachers who know their students, know what they need to succeed: what about a psychoeducator, a speech therapist, educational support, stimulation, listening, additional reading, tutoring, eating when they are hungry . These education professionals also know what training will allow them to better support them.
But we don’t listen to them. And PL23, by denying the differentiation and autonomy required in the education system, promises to further lock them into a single straitjacket which will ultimately crush them. And the whole of society will suffer.
I leave the final word to one of these teachers: “We don’t want Law 23 because it completely denies our professional autonomy, our specific needs in each environment, and it completely encroaches on our available time. already non-existent. » It could even be that the original quote contained a coronation.