The testimonials are numerous. Moreover, they are enlightening. Charged with educating the twelve million students who began a new school year on Thursday, September 2, some 850,000 teachers express in the press their perspectives on the -psychological- conditions of practicing their profession. None of them certainly question their intellectual achievements. Rightly so, the profession generally feels well-equipped for each subject to be taught. It is elsewhere that the problem lies. Let’s hear them: “no one ever taught us to manage a group of 35 teenagers,” writes a young teacher. “The reality in high schools and middle schools is completely disconnected from that of these excellence competitions,” laments a second. “I have no idea what a classroom is really like!” confesses a third. “How can I respond to students if no one is there to help me?” asks another, while one of his colleagues imagines his first lesson: “like a gladiator, without a net, facing the beasts.” One last one laments: “who will take care of us?”
It is understood: anxious about their new responsibilities, these teachers acknowledge *mezza voce* their mental unpreparedness. But why this anxiety when their knowledge in the subjects, duly validated by a diploma and training, should logically keep them away from such fear? What is at play in these complaints is not cognitive but affective. The assurance of the knowledge to be transmitted does not guarantee the act of transmitting knowledge. It does not shelter teachers from other challenges: that of their “unknown knowledge” which, if they have not sufficiently dealt with this aspect of their individual and family history, can make them vulnerable when confronted with emotions and other desirous impulsive motions – verbal or physical aggression, or openly seductive behavior that are the two faces of the same suffering – from their students.
Two institutions already provide psychological preparation in their programs: Justice and the Church now use professionals of the psyche for their young recruits. It is not only about avoiding the painful repetition of the Outreau case for the former and the pedophilia scandals for the latter. It is above all about initiating and nurturing an awareness that certain episodes of their personal journeys can destabilize them if they encounter in echo or reflection the identical distress of a student. By constantly inviting, under the guise of evaluation, to distance oneself from emotion, it sometimes spectacularly resurfaces.
At their request, “young teachers” raise the question of a “mentor”, a more experienced teacher assigned to support and advise them at the beginning of their career. In psychoanalysis, “supervisors” fulfill this function. Since the start of the school year, several private organizations offer courses to help young teachers “take charge” of their classes. Lasting from two to five days, these “coaching sessions” aim to reassure them somewhat about their ability to manage. A makeshift solution. Those who must hold the hands of the younger ones sensibly seek the supportive arm of the more experienced. They should not be blamed for this. Still less deprived of it.
