"Grève" Already?

Monday, 6 September, and the first full day of school—and the first strike of the school year. Over half of my sister’s middle school teachers were doing the “grève” today and will probably be tomorrow too. That means she’ll have a five hour gap tomorrow, between her first and last class, with her teachers staying off work along with many of the nation’s workers, and it seems over seventy percent of French people support the strike. But it means my sister won’t meet some of her teachers until as late as next week! For my sister this is pretty upsetting, because she has to wait to meet them, and she sat around for hours today with her friends and nothing to do, not even homework.

In my five years in the French school system, I’d say there have been teachers on strike every couple of months. It’s annoying because no one knows which teachers will be absent. Once I made the mistake of skipping a class of a teacher I thought was on strike (but who wasn’t) because she had a name similar to that of another teacher who was on strike. I got in big trouble and had to have a note from my parents. All the kids who made that mistake had to send in a signed note explaining why they had not come to the class.

Sometimes I liked to have a bit of a holiday from class but after a while the strikes can get annoying because of their unpredictability. Not all the teachers tell you if they’ll be joining the strike. There are varying opinions about it in the school and some are against it and some always go on strike, and some only sometimes. Sometimes children don’t show up on the strike day, thinking most of the teachers will be absent, and then the teachers that are there don’t do any work, and just show films and play games because of the lack of students to teach.

Sometimes the strike days are a chance to go to town to a restaurant, with a note from our parents to allow us to leave. So it’s a really funny scene to see a lot of twelve and thirteen-year-olds with their short legs and huge schoolbags crowding into the restaurants to order crepes, and pizzas. In my high school now, the teachers tend to stay at work, so no more long restaurant lunches for me.

I promise not to go on strike for my blog.  Bye for now!

Pierre