While the students of the Center de services scolaire Marie-Victorin have been back in person since January 18, I am convinced that it is much easier for them to persevere by being on the school benches, surrounded by school staff. dedicated and their classmates.
I agree, it had become necessary to adopt rigorous sanitary measures in order to limit the spread of the virus. But the price of isolation, after two years of health crisis, has proven to be particularly high for our students.
Now that I find them smiling and happy to be back in class, it becomes clear that children do much more than learn at school, they learn to become citizens.
It is indeed on the school benches that children take their first steps in society. They socialize there, learn to think, to discuss with their teachers and their classmates, to open up and to meet others.
The best decision
We reopened our schools last January, with all the challenges that entailed, but with a little hindsight, I think the real risk would have been to keep them closed. Because beyond the risk of contracting the disease, the isolation of the students would have had an even more severe impact on their mental health, not to mention their academic progress. Allowing them to return to school was therefore the best decision to make, in order to limit the too many deprivations that have been imposed on them for almost two years.
Tomorrow exists through our children, and the school contributes to creating for them a universe capable of changing their vision of the world, by opening their minds to the wealth of knowledge, know-how and interpersonal skills. It is through school that students manage to develop their thinking, their way of thinking and to find the place that suits them best in an increasingly complex society, whose benchmarks need to be redefined more than ever.
These benefits could be more difficult to be lavished on them in a virtual world, it is enough to find one’s loved ones after a long absence, the time of a meal or a family reunion, to be convinced of this. Humans are social animals, we all learned that the hard way. Being separated from our fellow human beings for too long periods of time can cause us a lot of suffering, we all understand this much better today. And the impact is even greater for young people.
Dedicated staff
We cannot salute enough the extraordinary efforts made by our school teams and the staff of our Educational Resources Service to adapt to distance learning and maintain the enthusiasm of our students in a setting that has proved necessary due to the pandemic, but far from ideal. Through their commitment, they have managed to offer a semblance of normality to our students, although nothing beats human contact and the richness of concrete interactions. School encourages children to open up to the world around them. This unique contact with the outside world helps to stimulate their curiosity and their motivation to integrate the learning that ensues. Indeed, it is in the classroom that our students benefit from the ideal conditions that will give them the courage to persevere.
It is in contact with their dedicated teachers, whose creativity, patience and courage no longer need to be demonstrated, that they learn and flourish.
Marie-Dominique Taillon, Director General, Marie-Victorin School Service Center