Guillaume, a primary school teacher, tells us about a daily life marked by profound fatigue, which makes him doubt his vocation. Here are the reasons.
He knew the situation was “far from idyllic”but he did not expect such disenchantment. It’s no secret: National Education is doing badly and teachers have been describing catastrophic working conditions for a long time… In barely five years in the profession, Guillaume has seen his enthusiasm erode. A teacher in an elementary school in Yvelines, where he is at the head of a CM1-CM2 class, the young man describes to us what makes him doubt his vocation, on a daily basis. “I see it as a kind of disillusionment. We don’t come into this profession by chance, we want to feel useful to society. But from year to year, I saw that everything declined: my motivation, my desire to work, to do more, to complete projects…” During his career, Guillaume worked in several different schools. But his observation is the same everywhere: teachers are exhausted, out of breath.
“There is a lot of burn-out and resignations in our profession, especially in the first years. In my establishment, a colleague left two months after the start of the school year,” he says. “I haven’t had a single year where I didn’t see my colleagues cry dozens of times”he laments. The young 30-year-old teacher tells us himself to consider “very often” to take time off work, or even leave teaching. “Changing career, I also think about it very often”he reveals to us. It must be said that this work is starting to have an impact not only on his mental health, but also on his physical health: “I’ve been feeling dizzy for months. I feel bad, I don’t sleep well and so it also affects my personal life. If it continues too much, I’ll have to stop.”
The reason for this shared uneasiness? “The conditions in which we work are despicable”, explains Guillaume. Overcrowded classes, a lack of time and resources, students suffering from disabilities who are not taken care of, sometimes tense relationships with certain parents… Indeed, “We receive a lot of insults, from children and adults alike. There are parents who are in total denial about the problems or possible psychological disorders of their children. They do not accept to hear it, and it falls on us.” Guillaume’s mother is also a teacher, and has received death threats on several occasions from parents of kindergarten students. For his part, the young CM1-CM2 teacher is going through an ordeal with the children themselves: “The other day, I was hit for half an hour by a kid who was having a tantrum. We sometimes have to belt children to the ground to try to channel them, we have children who try to run away, others who lock themselves in the toilet for tens of minutes… It’s not up to us to manage that, in theory.”
“Honestly, I don’t know how I’ll hold up this year.”admits Guillaume. If he constantly postpones the moment of having to stop, it is above all so as not to place an additional burden on his colleagues and friends who will have to distribute his students during his absence. It is also thanks to this “extremely close-knit team” that he manages to hold on for the moment: “We know that it’s not the institution that will protect us, so we have to protect ourselves. It’s our friendship that makes me stay for the moment.” But this solidarity, as precious as it is, cannot indefinitely compensate for the shortcomings of a system that is running out of steam, in which teachers burn out, isolate themselves or jump ship. A profession that should be supported and valued, thus becomes an area of abandonment, where the vocation is no longer enough.
