“Do you remember the definition of the Pythagorean theorem we saw last week? », Nicolas Dhooge confidently asks his 4th grade class.my fictitious, drawing a geometric figure on the blackboard. “In a right triangle, the square of the length of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of the other two legs.”A participant sitting in the front row immediately responds. “bean!” “Then laughter breaks out in the large hall of the Alembert high school in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis), where 70 very special students gather that afternoon. The average age is around 33 years old. And Nicolas repeats in front of the others, under the watchful eye of a School Choice trainer, the “Gestures of the Master”as part of this association’s summer campus.
A member of the international Teach For All network, it has been supporting higher education graduates and young professionals who wish to enter teaching at an advanced stage of their life in France. On the programme of these four intensive weeks, there are practical workshops (“directing students’ attention”, “giving clear instructions”), but also introductions to the didactics of each discipline (“preparing a session”, “learning to read”), as well as lectures by researchers (“orientation and self-censorship”, “child psychology”). Discussions with alumni (alumni) are also organized.
Objective: to facilitate their entry into the fund in September, when they will become contracted teachers. “As in first aid, I feel like I’m learning ‘life-saving gestures’ in class. We have to wait until we’re in the field to understand their full usefulness and see how we can adapt them.”Nicolas says after his fictional maths lesson. A few weeks ago, he was still responsible for fire safety in a hospital in Ile-de-France, after a +5 degree in occupational health and industrial hygiene.
Motivation and salary reduction.
When we ask him and his colleagues the reasons for their presence here, and for this 180-degree professional turn, his story joins the recurring testimonies of the “forkers”. These young people from generations Y and Z speak of brilliant studies in high school, which led them, without asking too many questions, to an important business or engineering school, to an institute of political studies, sometimes to a nice university… “But after a few years of working, we realize that we are not very fulfilled in what we do, that we do not always understand the purpose of our work”sums up Robin, 27, who recently joined from a human resources consulting firm, where he spent four years after finishing business school.
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