Welcome signs, hugs, jokes and smiles. This is how teachers and professors have received their students. Opening the door to centers that are as welcoming as possible, happy with the promise of sharing moments and learning. And, inside, upset with the system for not giving them the conditions to work well.
The three days of school advance on the calendar – Wednesday, Thursday and Friday – have taken their toll in terms of course preparation, welcoming new teachers and administrative enrollment management. All in three days. And social networks have been ablaze with complaints.
“I can already confirm, with the news and last-minute changes, that I will not have everything ready when the students arrive to class on Wednesday. The decision to advance the course was unilateral, hasty and wrong. Teaching needs time to be quality and rigorous,” tweeted a literature professor.
“Confirmed: no matter how much you don't eat, no matter how much you spend three whole days working, there is no time. There has been a lack of planning, time to debate and build,” lamented a teacher.
This is the second year in which the calendar has been advanced, leading to the greater number of school days per year (178 compared to 175). But the dates, with a weekend in between, have reduced the preparation time in the organization of the centers. The next course will be worse because day 1 is Sunday, so if it starts on Wednesday, like this course, they will only have two days. The minister has promised to discuss it with the School Council, but keeping two commitments from her predecessor: start the course the first week of September and not force teachers to work in July.
Despite the complaints, they did not go on strike called by three unions that only 0.9% followed. “Having to prepare the course in three days is a lack of respect for education, for the teaching teams, for the families, and, above all, for the children,” said one teacher. And he mentioned some nonsense. Teachers, monitors working late to be able to have “decent” classrooms and common spaces to welcome the children with closed doors to hide those that will be “ordered.” Teaching teams hastily designing significant proposals, with express student transfers. Hasty reception of new teachers at the center. "In three days it is impossible."
Teachers to be named. Drip of tuition allocations a day early. Most cases are with students with special needs that require thinking about resources and adaptations. “Families that do not know if they have been assigned and all because the waiting lists have been blocked to accommodate diversity. Didn't anyone think about it?”
Public and subsidized centers have places reserved for students with special needs due to disabilities or financial difficulties. Free materials and activities are guaranteed.
The reserved places are limited, so if families do not enter, they are assigned another center, even though there is one on the list of ordinary places. And on the contrary. If there is no demand for students with needs, the places are released for ordinary students. All this was resolved on September 4 and 5. The centers had to call the families to inform them if they were entering and they had to decide whether to change centers after they, resignedly, agreed to go to another.
A flagrant case is that of a vulnerable family of nine children, who wanted to transfer four of them to the center for older siblings. There was only space for the three-year-old. “Today!, the same day they start the course, they informed me via email that they have decided to assign him another school... different from the one for the older ones and the one for the medium ones.”
