What can the teachers say in the secret of the teacher room? Five of them agreed to confide without taboo.
The teacher room is like a miniature company, with its rules, its overflows, its conflicts, its great moments of joy. Teachers discuss everything: students, parents, courses, common projects, management, reforms or news. Mélanie, history teacher and geography in the Paris region, also confides that the exchanges around the news are sometimes stormy. “”It is a highly inflammatory theme in the room of the teachers who leads some to desert it and install their personal coffee maker in their classroom and eat outside so as not to have to comment or undergo the interpretations of some on the rantings of Trump or the opportunity to promote nuclear “, she explains.
But Élodie, French teacher in Burgundy, says that the number one subject in the teachers’ room is undeniably … the students. “”When we had to get angry during a class, we can really go wild on the students “she explains. “”We do it to let off steam, but there is a lot, a lot of tenderness behind the sometimes raw words that can be used. We need to unload, but as soon as we pass the door of the room, we make our teaching costume“, Adds the French teacher. The teacher room, a SAS necessary to decompress?”This is really the goal! Especially when you just go downstairs between recreation. We also exchange the pearls of our students! “adds Thomas, English teacher in a Parisian college.
For Youssef, Maths teacher, the teacher room is really “complaint office“.”The recreation lasts 15 minutes, as long as your classroom is far away, you barely have time to move, go pee and have a coffee. Result: as people have very little time, they complain (especially students) and presto, they leave in their room!“He explains.”When sometimes you have an hour of a hole in the timetable, it becomes the Empire of the Small Talk. It talks weather, it exchange banalities. It is neither very deep nor very politicized, contrary to the image that we had once made teachers“He adds.
But the teachers in the teachers are also an opportunity to approach the problems of the students. “”We sometimes talk about it, but we also approach our concerns about their difficulties. It is really an informal place of exchange for crucial information or that helps to understand a situation (did you put a thing next to the machine ?, But she harassed it for a year in 6th grade!)“, Describes Mélanie. For Agathe, a physics-chemistry teacher in a college, after having taught a long time in high school, each teacher room is unique. “It can be very different from one establishment to another. In high school for example, there are many more unionized people and therefore debates between unions“, observes the teacher. But Agathe believes that teachers are colleagues like the others.”We also talk about our personal lives, depending on the affinities“, She explains. Logically, there can therefore be conflicts and stormy discussions, as in any office.
As for management and parents, these are two other frequent subjects. “”Management is never in the teacher room, so we let go a lot … and as soon as the main one passes the door, everyone is silent“, observes Elodie.”Communication with parents is a very complicated exercise and often the teachers have the impression that some parents are absent, outdated or lax … Exactly what they blame them!“Explains Mélanie, history-geography teacher.
Believe it or not, in the teacher room, it also happens that teachers have fun! By playing cards for example, but not only. “We confiscated a lot of water pistols at the end of the year“, Says Élodie. “It was water battle on water battle between colleagues. A real carnage. We do a difficult job, but there is a lot of solidarity between us, and the interest of students is our priority. The teacher room allows us to cultivate this solidarity”she concludes.
