A Look at French Education:
Interview
with Principal Kerloch
By Myriam Pinchon
(Special
to Education Update: Gradignan, France)
Saint Françis
Xavier Don Bosco school is both a public service and a private
school in Gradignan near Bordeaux in France. In this elementary
school, Mr. Kerloch, the head of the school, three teachers
and a substitute work with 37 boys (7-16 years old). For
three years, Mr. Kerloch has at heart to show the pupils
that the school takes care about them and their future. Who
are the pupils? They are boys and they are different. Their
behavior is tough and sometimes violent. Sometimes they come
from disadvantaged families and often their family shows
pathological disorders and a social failure. They are 8-10
pupils in a classroom with one teacher. Mr. Kerloch has a
double responsibility because he is the head and three days
a week he is their teacher too.
How did he decide to work
in this kind of school? He was a teacher and wanted to renew
his practical experience of teaching. He worked with a teacher
who worked with deaf young people. After that, for two years
he got a specific teacher training to learn about different
fields of the specialized education. Two days a week, for one
school year, he came to St Françis Xavier school to
find out the difficulties of the work (mental deficiencies,
verbal and physical violence, resistances, etc.). He realized
the need for necessary adaptations to create the lessons because
these pupils are easily tired and have little stock of general
knowledge. Mr. Kerloch wanted to work with pupils suffering
from pathology. He is very interested in multidisciplinary
work. Every week he goes to meeting with social workers, educators,
psychologist, psychiatrist, teachers, referent of the pupils,
departmental head, from the St Françis Xavier school.
So different people, different looks, different opinions meet
each other. During an interview, Mr. Kerloch, told me: "There
is the will not to confine the child in a case, but to accompany
him in a dynamic, opened and evolutive trajectory".
The school is a suffering
for these children. To work with them, teachers need to say
goodbye to a traditional ideal of the profession. They need
to work in a different way. These pupils must be at the heart
of the teachers concerns. It is difficult for these boys
because they know they are committed in a way of segregation
for a short while. Mr. Kerloch told me: "I think it's a little bit unfair for these boys because
the French system asks them to take a decision to choose a
job pretty early whereas they would have need extra time to
maturate their plans." Mr. Kerloch gives the aims of the
action for the pupils: "Reinforce their basic knowledge
in French and math but without painful relentlessness. Support
and accompany the way in the turbulence of the adolescence,
structuring the time, places and activities in and out of the
school. The school needs to anticipate the attacks of the scope
and surroundings by the children. It is a necessary step for
them in spite of the appearances. Create a new self-esteem,
favor subjects allowing the affirmation of the "I," and
a better construction of the "we" (sports, arts,
English). Assure the pupils a stock of dynamic, exploitable
and negotiable qualifications. Support his steps, his wish
of orientation and future training to anticipate the school
leaving without qualification." Mr. Kerloch meets weekly
with other heads or key people to open crossroads to the pupils.
St Françis Xavier
Don Bosco is not a school like the others. A team shows solidarity,
works with and around the boys and takes care of them. It
devotes all its time to improve the future of these children.
In this different school a non-typical head was necessary.
Mr. Kerloch makes a tremendous effort to bring new activities
to these boys, to support and answer the teaching team's
expectations.#
