It was on the third day of the new school year that the child exploded. It was at the beginning of September, in the kindergarten class of a school in the Center de services scolaire de Montréal (CSSDM).
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
“He was pulling on a toy while arguing with another child, tells me Anne-Marie B.*, the teacher. I took the toy away from them to get his attention and… and he got violent. »
The boy jumped on her, hit her, scratched her, tore her hair. “He became super calm again when I asked a child to press the button on the intercom for help. Hearing the sound of the intercom, he calmed down…”
A special education worker (TES) rushed in with a colleague to subdue the child. Anne-Marie met the mother that afternoon. Reaction of the mother: “We hoped that he would not do that again…”
Verification made, the child had similar violent behavior at his old school, in another school service centre. No one had informed the staff of the new school, including Anne-Marie.
“The following week, she says, when he was turbulent, I tried to ignore him. He started attacking the other students: he picked up a chair and pushed two of them against the wall before I could intervene… There was an escalation quite quickly, I got all the students out to ensure the safety of as many children as possible. »
Alone in the class, the child began to tear up books.
The TES have arrived, again.
I would point out that one of her colleagues, to whom I spoke, told me that Anne-Marie is exemplary in her class management.
At the café where she tells me about the episode, Anne-Marie shows me the remains of a bruise on her chest, traces of the blows she received from the student ten days earlier.
She begins to tell me about her life, this burning desire to become a teacher, which she has always had.
She was a teacher for 11 years.
She lo-d…
Loved the contact with the children, loved feeling useful, loved knowing that the parents appreciated him to the point of chatting with each other, to the point of crossing their fingers that their children had him as a teacher.
“But it’s work that draws juice. Have you ever been to a 5 year old’s party?
– Um yes…
– That’s how it is, kindergarten. It’s draining. But… it brings so much. I won’t find myself another job where I get hugs every day. »
If she speaks in the past tense, it is because Anne-Marie recently resigned, in full re-entry.
I come back to the word draining. A teacher for 11 years, Anne-Marie slept 10 hours a night during the school year. It’s draining because right from kindergarten, children with special needs monopolize attention.
Teachers raise a flag, but help is scarce. Or arrives late.
Anne-Marie: “I had a burnout a few years ago. I was sidelined for two months. I came back on my own when I found out that the substitute who was replacing me had decided to leave…”
Anne-Marie wondered if she was a little nature, before remembering: in her baccalaureate, she worked nights at the CHUM, before going to her classes, during the day, at UQAM…
And she still had energy.
But when she became a teacher, bam, she was always out of breath. Draining is the word. Add to that that in kindergarten, teachers catch all the viruses of children…
Before the pandemic, says Anne-Marie, she was heading for a second burnout. Then, in March 2020, schools closed because of the pandemic. Anne-Marie has rested. She made masks. Just that, or almost.
The year 2020-2021 was her best, she worked illegally four days a week. Illegally? The CSSDM refuses four-day weeks. It didn’t matter, Anne-Marie agreed with a substitute who replaced her systematically: “Each week, I ‘called’ sick for a day,” she says.
Anne-Marie looks at me: “It’s against the rules, I know that. »
But this 80% task allowed him to work with 100% motivation. “It has been the best year of my entire career as a teacher. »
In 2021-2022, last year, the agreement with the substitute no longer held. Anne-Marie took a sick day every two weeks. But she was still getting tired, unstoppable.
She returned for the 2022-2023 year, thinking it might be her last.
Then, at the beginning of September: “The drop that broke the camel’s back. »
I listened to Anne-Marie. I thought the straw that broke her camel’s back was that troubled little guy she’d just told me about.
I was in the field.
“No, him, I would have had him! she assures me. I would have developed a bond with him.
– What is gout, then?
– On Thursday morning, we filled out the paperwork for the child to receive services, help. He was going to receive a rating and, eventually, count for two students, in my class…”
Pause here: Anne-Marie had 17 students in her class. The troubled boy, counting for two, was going to officially raise his class to “18”, after evaluation…
But she already had at least four children – by the looks of it – who were going to need intervention plans for issues like attention deficit and oppositional disorder, for example.
The last straw is that after this meeting on Thursday morning, Anne-Marie learned that a new child, also registered late, was arriving at school. In his class.
So his class of “18” became a class of “19”.
That night, I couldn’t fall asleep. I didn’t know what I was going to do with so many special needs children in my class. It’s not the total number of students that’s the problem. This is the number of students with special needs. It was too much.
Anne Marie
Anne-Marie therefore got up and wrote her letter of resignation in the middle of the night.
She fell asleep immediately afterwards.
Anne-Marie wants me to say in the column that the school team was great, that the school is nice and clean (“I’ve already worked in a contaminated school, it’s pocket…”) and that the director was spotless. No, the problem, she says, is the job, it’s the overflow of students in difficulty.
And the Montreal School Service Center.
Anne-Marie would have liked flexibility, it would have allowed her to continue. The CSSDM refuses arrangements such as the four-day week, citing the shortage. The CSSDM, she says, overtaxes female teachers by overloading classes with troubled students.
Every teacher I know would take smaller classes long before a pay rise. More services for students in difficulty, too.
Anne Marie
She submitted her resignation letter on September 9. She would have been willing to stay in the class until a new homeroom teacher was chosen, but again, impossible: her post could only be advertised if she resigned.
Anne-Marie therefore resigned.
The CSSDM was super efficient in one respect: its access to the computer network was disconnected even before the end of its last day of work. Part of the material that she would have liked to leave to her substitute could therefore not be recovered.
It is therefore the story of a teacher, Anne-Marie B., who chose to leave the titanic education.
This is a history, you will tell me, but after years of listening to stories of teachers on the edge, that of Anne-Marie cuts them all…
“What are you going to do now, Anne-Marie?
– Yesterday, I made my CV. I think I’ll take a desk job. I will thrive outside of work. »
*Anne-Marie testifies openly, but asked me not to write her last name, to prevent Google from linking her to this chronicle for digital eternity. I chose not to identify his CSSDM school to preserve the identity of the unruly child described above.