Back to school is not stressful for children, teachers also apprehend it. Discover the testimony of several teachers who confide in what they fear the most as the start of the school year.
Even after several years of exercises, the start of the school year remains a special day for the teachers. Meeting with students and new colleagues, presentation of time jobs, implemented the new directives of the ministry. This is precisely what worries Claire, a French professor in Eure for twenty years. “The workload outside the courses increases from year to year and the reforms that fall from above.”she explains to us. What has been put in place with great difficulty a few months earlier can be swept away at the next school year, and the teachers are on the front line.
Thomas, professor of mathematics in a Parisian high school, is worried not about the composition of his classes or the behavior of the students, but rather his ability to do his job well. “There is the impression that after two months of vacation, we will no longer know how to do, that we forgot how to teach well. And finally, it’s like bicycle, it comes back immediately!”, he explains to the Women’s Journal. Thomas also insists on the importance of making a good impression. “If you flout too much or if you don’t look strictly enough, the students are rushing into it and it is quickly complicated to catch up“Observes the Maths teacher.
In addition, teachers do not work alone and the composition of teaching teams is also a source of stress for many of them. “It is always stressful to discover who are the teachers in the class where I am the main teacher, but also who are the colleagues who work with me on the same class“Explains Alice, a German teacher in Seine-Saint-Denis. A feeling shared by Nina, who also evokes apprehension in the face of non-filled positions. “This can concern the main teachers, nurses, psychologist of national education, even management”, Details the history-geo teacher.
Finally, falling on a difficult class, all the teachers we interviewed fear it and that is probably what they apprehend the most. “This is really what comes first for me”testifies Ismaël, French teacher in Burgundy. “”This unknown on class atmospheres is very stressful “he adds. Same story on the side of Nina, a history-geography teacher in the Paris region, which also fears the discovery of complex issues in classes: harassment, unclosed handicap, intra-family violence. With a glaring lack of means to deal with it.
Of course, one of the major apprehensions also concerns the timetable, each year a real headache for the administration of establishments. “”We fear a timetable with holes, scattered hours or to have classes after sports time, the assurance that they are tired and therefore more dissipated “, says Mathilde, SVT teacher in Lille. Their timetable, Claire or Alice also apprehend it. As for Nina, she adds that there is also the fear of having a schedule incompatible with that of her own children. An additional hassle!
