Inexperienced teachers should start in kindergarten where it's 'less demanding': Que. education minister

Undated file photo of children in a kindergarten class.

A Quebec kindergarten teacher says the education minister is out of touch with the realities of her profession after he said in a recent radio interview that her work was "less demanding" than other teaching jobs.

"I do not understand that I can hear that from the mouth of my Minister of Education," said Jo-Annie Blais, a kindergarten teacher and graduate from the Université Laval, in an interview with Noovo Info.

Faced with a shortage of about 5,000 teachers to start the 2023 school year, Minister Bernard Drainville said earlier this week that less experienced teachers should be put in kindergarten classes to mitigate burnout.

"You teach through games, children take naps, there's no homework," Drainville told 98.5 FM's Paul Arcand, who expressed concern about young teachers leaving the profession prematurely because they're overwhelmed.

"For a young teacher [...] I think this could be a great way of getting them experience so that they can then graduate, so to speak, to more complex and demanding groups," Drainville explained.

After hearing his comments, Jo-Annie Blais said she felt compelled to set the record straight and wrote an open letter on Facebook describing in detail what it's like to teach the youngest students and how she had to take a leave of absence twice due to burnout.

"To hear today that kindergarten classes are the easiest to teach has caused me great disbelief," she wrote in her letter, which described issues such as referring students for professionals "and their long wait lists," hours spent on tailoring report cards for individual students and dealing with students in crisis in the classroom.

"How many blows do we get every year? Far too many!" the letter stated.

"During my second work stoppage, the teacher who took my place also left on work stoppage, a teacher who had a group for the first time in her career. And this despite the fact that my two kindergarten colleagues welcomed and accompanied her. If it was so easy, why did she leave after two months?"

Noovo Info confirmed that the Fédération québécoise des directions d’établissement d'enseignement (FQDE) is facing a shortage of 5,000 teachers -- excluding schools in Montreal -- ahead of the upcoming school year. La Presse first reported the labour shortage figures, which break down to a lack of 2,000 full-time teachers and 3,000 part-time teachers.

The teachers' federation said the current shortage is 3.5 times higher than last year's when the network was missing around 1,400 at the beginning of the school year.

The Ministry of Education said it is still waiting to consolidate the number of teaching vacancies in Quebec.

Drainville has also said there might be more non-legally qualified teachers in Quebec classrooms this year to deal with the labour shortage.

"For those that have a bac [bachelor's degree] in a subject that's taught in school, if you're interested in trying teaching, come," he told Arcand on 98.5 FM.

"You'll be what we call 'non-legally certified' teachers.' You can teach history, math, French -- a subject that is known through your bac -- and eventually seek your certification through a transfer-credit program that universities are currently putting in place."

In cases where neither a certified teacher nor an uncertified teacher with a bachelor's is available, "at this moment, Paul, it will happen that we have teachers who only have a dec [diploma of college studies]," acquired at the CEGEP-level, Drainville stated. 

"And in certain exceptional cases, people that have a post-secondary education diploma, but who have started either CEGEP or university," he added, stressing that this would be a rare occurrence.

Reacting to the lack of teachers, the head of the Fédération des syndicats de l’enseignement (FSE-CSQ) said the current situation was "discouraging."

"We find ourselves in a situation we could have foreseen years ago," said Josée Scalabrini, president of the FSE, in an interview with Noovo Info

"We didn't value the teaching profession. And now we're faced with a serious shortage - I repeat, a shortage that was foreseeable and that we've been denouncing for 10 years."