Compulsory return to school: teachers in the “fuzzy”

There is enough to lose your Latin, or rather your French in the face of government announcements in terms of management of the health crisis in National Education. In any case, this is the effect that the decision to make compulsory attendance at school from kindergarten to college had on Adrien Sauvage, SEGPA teacher – specialized and adapted education for college students in the most difficulty. “I wasn’t expecting much because the sequence between ads and counter-ads makes me feel like I’m on a rollercoaster” he breathes. This return to the benches of the school does not make this Norman neither dissatisfied at 100%, nor satisfied at 100%.

“I think it’s a good thing that the volunteering is overhe blurts out. At first, we said that the school should give priority to the pupils most in difficulty, but we realize that many have not returned.“He had a bitter experience of it. While teaching from 6th to 3rd year, since May 12, he has only seen 18 of his students face-to-face … out of 64.”The follow-up was good during confinement except for the 3rd who were on internship where it was more complicated. But since the deconfinement they have been much less responsive and we have lost 50% of them, the others continue to work from homehe notes. The families are very worried and despite the fact that I film the lessons to try to reassure them, or that I explain that learning with a teacher is easier than at home, they still don’t come back. So for 15 days, [NDLR : l’année scolaire se termine le 4 juillet] I frankly doubt that they will put their children back in school on June 22 even if it is compulsory.“However, he is convinced that this return to the school benches can only be positive before the summer holidays or an orientation, in particular for the most fragile.

Blurry and older discomfort

The compulsory return to school is therefore a “good” decision according to him, but which is lacking in its lack of organization. “Again, this is not concerted. It is the teams on the ground who manage and once again bear the responsibility,” he regrets. Among the many questions that Adrien Sauvage asks himself, he still does not know how to enforce the distance meter between two students who share the same school desk. In the same way, the co-secretary departmental SNUipp de l’Eure assures that vulnerable teachers – suffering from a chronic illness or living with a person of whom this is the case – have had the assurance of being able to continue to work remotely. have to go back to class anyway? If not, how can these students be accommodated without a teacher?

Yet it is the repetition of the situation that seems to annoy him. “For the start of the school year on June 2, we had to wait until June 3 to have the Frequently Asked Questions from National Education updatedhe assures. We are in total improvisation.“Bad mark for the government? Certainly according to the teacher who finds it very difficult to learn the orientations of the ministry on the radio at the same time as the parents. A bad point which is one more tension in a long series of disillusionment and difficult relations since the beginning of the five-year term with the teaching staff.

Discomfort between National Education and teachers

Reform of the BAC, “the school of confidence”, strike of the surveillance of the BAC, retention of marks or the suicide of a school principal in Pantin (93) who denounces his conditions of exercise are only a few examples of the malaise between the Ministry of National Education and teachers, without even mentioning the diffuse feeling of a lack of recognition around the profession. “With the confinement, some parents came to see us and told us they realized the difficulty of the job now that they had experienced home schooling.“, he assures. A balm to the heart immediately darkened according to him by “a climate of general fatigue“but also distrust. He admits that he did not appreciate the statement of June 10 on RTL by Jean-Michel Blanquer – Minister of National Education. In this interview where the journalist asked the Minister to react to the figure put forward by a report by France 2 where a journalist put forward an estimate of 40,000 the number of teachers who had abandoned their post without justification during confinement, i.e. 5% of the profession, the minister refused to comment on this figure and preferred to praise the behavior of “the vast majority” of the teaching staff then added to consider sanctions against these “absenteeists”.