Last week, a new teacher from an elementary school in the greater Montreal area left her classroom to take refuge in the hallway. Sheltered from the eyes of her students, she burst into tears. The little tanners gave him a hard time. The pressure was strong.
“It’s normal to cry when you start in the profession. I bawled myself when I started out,” says Claudine Ouellette, a secondary education consultant at the Center de services scolaire de la Pointe-de-l’Île (CSSPI), in eastern Montreal.
Pedagogical advisers play a little-known but vitally important role in the school network: they help teachers manage their class and use the best teaching methods. The task of pedagogical advisers has become heavier – and more complex – with the massive arrival of “non-legally qualified” teachers called in as reinforcements because of the shortage of staff.
The support of these thousands of teachers without certificates (and often without experience) has become the “number one challenge” for educational advisers, reveals an internal survey that The duty obtained. This sounding was carried out in February 2022 with 892 educational advisers who are members of the Federation of Education Professionals of Quebec (FPPE-CSQ).
Due to a lack of qualified candidates, no less than 3,757 teachers without a certificate were hired in Quebec schools in 2020-2021, according to the Ministry of Education. A 50% increase over the previous year. The actual number of non-legally qualified teachers is much larger, experts say, because official figures do not take into account occasional substitutes.
Who are these non-legally qualified teachers? People hired as teachers without having completed their four-year bachelor’s degree paving the way to the profession. These may be education students, teachers with overseas experience, or supply teachers who hold a bachelor’s degree in a discipline (geography, history, biology, etc.) that they teach in high school.
Class management
“Educational advisers put so much effort into dealing with non-legally qualified teachers that they no longer have time to advise other members of staff,” laments Jacques Landry, president of the FPPE.
He worries about the quality of support for new teachers: the hiring of educational advisers increased by 10% between the years 2017 and 2020, compared to a 96% increase in “commitment tolerances” (of teachers not legally qualified ) for the same period.
According to the survey, educational advisers support teachers who are not legally qualified in several facets of the profession: they may be unfamiliar with educational programs, teaching methods or ways of evaluating students. They also need help managing their class.
“It is normal for new teachers to experience a degree of insecurity. At the start of a career, we are all afraid of losing control of a group and seeing the situation deteriorate,” explains Pascal Lapierre, educational advisor at the Center de services scolaire des Trois-Lacs, in Vaudreuil-Dorion.
Three-quarters of educational advisers who responded to the online survey say they have accompanied teachers who are not legally qualified or who do not have a Quebec teaching certificate over the past two years. The vast majority of them (73%) say that the support for these teachers is “more demanding” or “much more demanding” than that usually intended for new graduate teachers.
The survey notes that teachers who are not legally qualified can suffer from isolation. Sometimes they are stigmatized by their colleagues. Pascal Lapierre stresses, however, that all teachers, including those without legal qualification, are welcome in schools, because they play a crucial role in the era of teacher shortages.
“Our new teachers need support, but they bring positive things. We experience great successes with them, ”adds Nathalie Gaudin, educational advisor at the CSSPI, in the east of Montreal.
She and her colleague Claudine Ouellette note that support for all new professors, including graduates, is essential. Especially since young teachers often find themselves in the most difficult classes: with their seniority, more experienced teachers have the privilege of choosing the groups made up of students who are more successful.