I have taught college literature since 2010. Currently, I am witnessing the biggest mobilization of my career for the working conditions of public service employees. In the media, however, it is mainly about our salaries. It is true that a 12.7% increase over five years, while the inflation forecast for this period exceeds 18% (and the deputies have just obtained 30%!), is enough to outrage us.
But in exchange for this offer which impoverishes us, the government also demands more flexibility from us. It’s as if he has never set foot in a CEGEP, where we demonstrate our flexibility every day, like the reed in Lafontaine’s fable.
There is the flexibility of precarious teachers, who receive their task in August and who often have to, in a few days, prepare two or three different lesson plans for the session. We don’t see these teachers much: they often teach in the evening, in continuing education, without the daily support of more experienced colleagues. Like permanent staff, they prepare new lessons and correct their growing number of students, but are paid half as much as their colleagues in regular training, for the same work.
And this precariousness lasts for years: I only obtained my own tenure 12 years after I was hired!
There is also the flexibility we demonstrate to meet the growing needs of our students. Among our 120 to 150 students per session, at least thirty have special needs due to a learning disability, a mental health problem, a physical disability or a neurodevelopmental disorder (ADHD, autism), or even because they are allophones.
These students are entitled to the same chances of success as others. We therefore adapt to each of them, for example by providing them with our slideshows in advance, giving them extra time or meeting with them more often. Their number increases every year, contrary to the resources available to us.
There is the flexibility that we exercise in premises poorly suited to learning, where the walls are sometimes movable partitions and where the board also serves as a screen for the projector, where ventilation, piping or the echo of the sports complex are sometimes so noisy that they disturb exams. In these premises, technology is also lacking: the proper functioning of the speakers, the projector, or even the neon lights must never be taken for granted, and we must know how to change our lesson plans at the last minute.
There is, moreover, flexibility in the face of students’ complicated lives: they work more and more hours outside, hit like us by the rising cost of living and the housing crisis; they sometimes have dependent children; they have ministerial schedules which make the concept of “office hours” when they should visit us obsolete. We therefore make pirouettes to meet them during their availability, sometimes between two bites of sandwich, in our small offices that we share with four or five colleagues. Or we answer multiple emails with questions every day.
Finally, there is the flexibility that we demonstrate in response to the requests of our management and the ministry when it comes to rethinking programs, finding new ways to increase our success rates, and to encourage student engagement. or to cram more into our premises, or when it comes to preparing them for a ministerial test frozen in another era.
Of course, we are sometimes rigid — but only when requests or changes are made without consulting us, because we sincerely believe we are best placed to put students at the heart of decisions. The better working conditions that we demand are to be able to better help our students succeed. It is time for our government to understand this and listen to us, which, like the oak in the fable, risks ending up uprooted by the current storm.