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MAY 2005

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.#

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