The end is approaching, I’m exhausted, as I’m sure you are. For me, it’s the course performances that end, the hundreds of corrections that show up with the necessary comments to make, the frustrations and disappointments to manage.
For you, it’s the final sprint, the long projects, the exams, the exhausting teamwork with anxiety and stress as a backdrop. In short, a typical end of session for a CEGEP student. Yet while your attention and diligence should be at their maximum capacity, boosted by the adrenaline of the end, I look for you and cannot find you. Where are you, my beautiful student?
Where are you when I see you in class looking at your barely hidden cell phone while I present social issues that concern you, concern us and which before provoked so many reactions that I had to take turns speaking?
Am I different? Have I become an uninteresting, dull, demotivating teacher? Are the subjects, themes, issues, questions of our life in society now obsolete, outdated, impertinent for you?
Where are you, my beautiful student, before classes start or during breaks? I no longer hear you discussing, laughing, expressing your grievances and your joys which allowed me to capture snippets of your life that you let escape through contact with others and which made CEGEP life so beautiful and lively.
Where are you, my beautiful student, when I pass you in the corridors with your head bowed, your back bent towards this world that yearns for you? What does this world offer you that I can’t compete with? Is it softer? More enveloping? More exciting? More stimulating? More secure?
Come back to me, because I have the very cruel feeling that you are slipping through my fingers through the news feeds of your cleverly orchestrated network of algorithms vampirizing your attention, your mind, your concentration.
Come back and confront me with my truths as a teacher, come back and touch me with your confidences about your life, your needs, your reality. Come back, my beautiful student, interact with the others in class, hearing you laugh, talk, even talk too much makes me happy. Besides, I choose without any hesitation your talkative side rather than your silence, your string of words at high speed rather than your absent presence.
I miss you, because this educational dance cannot be done without you, impossible!
I need you and I appeal to your intellectual curiosity, your desire to learn, your critical sense, your thirst for surpassing yourself. I need you in your imperfection and your immaturity, you where you are. I need your real, audible and living presence in class to propel me and give me the energy to continue to believe in you, to create material, to improve and refine my work. The meaning of my professional life depends on the quality of the relationship that we develop together.
The life of a CEGEP class, like any classroom, I suppose, is a unique opportunity for memorable moments, sometimes hard and intense, but rarely odorless or tasteless. Life is teeming and overflowing, that’s how I like it and that’s probably why I feel so sad in front of your spectral presence.
I know that the attraction is powerful, that the addictive scheme is a success, that many adults do the same, but I want to believe it! I will never resign myself to accepting this state of affairs, you deserve better, I deserve better. Our society deserves better. And I know we know what we need to do, together!
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reference: www.lapresse.ca