On Monday, the Ministry of Education is launching a new campaign aimed at promoting the teaching profession.
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Developed at a cost of $1.5 million, it is divided into three components: an advertising campaign, teacher testimonials and funny videos on social media.
In the ad, we can see students sitting behind desks in a classroom. They lift the table top to take out the notebook, but when they close it, adults, dressed in various work uniforms, take their place.
“I think it’s great to close the table and then have an adult highlight the importance a teacher can have to your career,” comments Education Minister Bernard Drainville in an interview with TVA News.
Screenshot/TVA News
“It says to a young person, ‘You can change a child’s life,'” he adds.
A vaunted campaign, but…
This government initiative is welcomed by the Federation of School Unions, which however stresses that further efforts are needed to ensure good working conditions for teachers.
“We have to give the best CEGEP students the desire to come to the faculties of education and learn in our classrooms. And that’s why we need to send positive messages, and positive messages are not just communications, they are also concrete actions in communities,” says Richard Bergevin, president of FSE-CSQ.
Simon Landry, a teacher from the greater Montreal region, also welcomes the campaign, but expresses some reservations.
“It comes with a certain contradiction, where on the one hand we want to revalue the profession, but at the same time, on the other hand, to face the shortage of teachers, we are ready to accept basically anyone, and we say, an adult will do it,” he says.
Bernard Drainville admits that work needs to be done to revalue the teaching profession in Quebec and that an advertising campaign is not the only option.
“Yes, there are challenges in education, we keep seeing it in the news, but there is also very good progress. And that’s the aim of the campaign, to emphasize the positive, because there are positives in education,” he declares.
The minister did not want to specify the number of new teachers he wants to recruit through this eight-week campaign.
