Geneviève Royer, High School Remedial TeacherThe main health issue facing teachers is anxiety. This is reflected, among other things, in a year-over-year increase in the number of teachers needing to take extended leaves of absence. For example, between 2013 and 2018, while there was a four per cent increase in the number of teachers in the profession, 13 per cent more teachers had to take this type of leave.
Let's look at what's happening now. The government has been talking about reopening schools since April 10 and not once has it presented the measures it intends to take to teachers and their organizations for approval. It induces extreme anxiety for education workers, their families and the families of our students. So we talk to each other to put forward our criteria, as experts in school life. We see all the more the justice of our demand, which dates back more than 20 years, to reduce the student-to-teacher ratio and to have a sufficient number of professionals and specialized educators with sufficient hours to assist us. Things cannot go back to the way they were. Another example is maintenance, the cleaning and sanitation of schools. The number of hours allocated to this has been decreasing for years to such an extent that the proposed maintenance schedule for primary and secondary schools, published in 2015 by the Ministry of Health and Social Services, is not being followed at all. We don't want to go back to our schools where students' desks are cleaned once a year! This is why we are currently discussing among ourselves and with our unions how we ourselves will organize the return to the classroom. This is already providing a sense of security in opposition to the way the government is dealing with the issue of reopening schools.
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It is clear to us
that it is our working conditions that
generate this illness. The contradiction between
the needs of our
students (both pedagogical and human) and our
ability to meet them,
given the lack of resources, is untenable.
Schools are places of complex
social relations where all of society's problems
come together, day
after day. We need
to deal with young people who are themselves
struggling with mental or
physical illness, or with family members who are
suffering from it,
young people who are financially insecure, or
who have learning
disabilities. We reject the pressure that our
overwork is due to
individual behavioural problems, a "bad" way of
managing our classes.