"School is over": five teachers deliver their exhaustion in a documentary

Louise Sallé // Photo credit: JC MILHET / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 13:00 p.m., June 10, 2023

The exhaustion of teachers in the face of a sometimes intractable system. The documentary "L'école est finie", which traces the journey of five school teachers who have recently experienced burn-out, is broadcast this Saturday evening on Public Sénat. Untenable working conditions, lack of recognition of the institution and understanding on the part of the hierarchy... Three of them have decided to throw in the towel, despite their love for the profession.

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"You're doing your job badly"

Because the documentary focuses on putting into images the fantasies that we stick to the teaching profession. And the first to believe it are the teachers themselves who fall from the clouds when they enter the National Education. "We ask the school more and more things, with very little human and material resources, which makes it almost infeasible," says a former school director to Europe 1, who also participated in the documentary broadcast on Public Senate.

Consequence: "You are doing your job badly. In addition, you have in front of you an increasingly specific audience with students with disabilities. But, you don't have the means to push each student where you want to take them," she said.

Teachers left alone to face the difficulties of the field

Another problem is the behaviour of some students, the former principal continues. The latter was threatened with death by a student. "I was not helped at all by my hierarchy and I had no answer to my emails, phone calls. You are alone in the face of the difficulties that pile up and become abysmal," says the former director.

"And then you tell yourself that you are not going to stand alone in the face of this system that is crumbling. So you protect yourself, you go bankrupt, that is, you leave the ship so you can stay alive," she concludes. The idea to make this film was born after Christine Renon's suicide in 2019. This school director in Pantin in Ile-de-France committed suicide in the hall of her school, faced with the accumulation of work and the deterioration of her professional environment. "Christine, it's us," say all the teachers in front of the camera in this documentary, broadcast this Saturday evening on Public Senate, channel 13 of the TNT, from 21 pm.