Open letter to adults raccrocheurs

Photo courtesy

Chantal Morasse, special collaboration

Saturday, February 17, 2018 05:00

UPDATE
Saturday, February 17, 2018 05:00

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In these Days of perseverance in school, I would like to take a little of your time to tell you the story of heroes and heroines that inspire me a lot and about which little is said when it is a question of dropping out of school.

Every day for the last five years, in my community organization based in the Montérégie region, I attended a show on a human scale, one where adult, young and less young, to play their own role, and probably one of the most ambitious and difficult of their lives : that of raccrocheur.

They call Jonathan, Luisa, Magalie, Karim. They come from everywhere, have the profiles and life paths are very different, but they land all in the same place. They come out of a system that has failed or has not been able to firmly establish in this project of society that is education. I will pass on the possible causes of this phenomenon of exclusion because I have more desire to talk to you about solutions than problems.

One day, Jonathan, Luisa, Magalie and Karim have decided that their social integration was going to have to go through a return to school. At their age, the adult general education becomes the necessary passage to anyone who wants to obtain a secondary school diploma or the prerequisites to enter vocational training.

This is not for lack of trying. Some of them have even registered up to eight times in a training centre for adults. But the challenges experienced during adolescence have not miraculously disappeared, that this system in which they were hardly once did not become, when rendered at the sector adult, a river more quiet.

A school springboard more suitable

In we to Space career, we were all in this situation multidécrochage experienced by some of our clients. The idea of starting a school, a springboard which would allow these adults to learn to learn, but also to develop as an individual, has germinated. It is thanks to the partnership with the Commission scolaire de Saint-Hyacinthe at which a financial assistance from the government of Quebec has been paid that the project was born.

Today, they are sixty to pass each year by The Margin-the school of the street. At their own pace. According to their own objectives, which is not necessarily a diploma. They create relationships, and undertake various approaches external to improve their chances of success and their conditions of life.

For the first time, they fit in an environment. For the first time, they have a real opportunity to acquire the means of their ambition. And they are so proud to be at the school !

Speaking of pride, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that our little school of the street, built with three times nothing and held it at arm’s length by our team-extraordinary school, is the project that makes me the most proud of in my entire career.

Solutions that work

What was my surprise to learn, there are a little over a year, that the pride felt was in fact shared by some thirty other organizations who, like us, have decided to dwell on the needs, and problems, adult dropouts. Organizations that are building sites suitable, flexible and inclusive.

Of Jonathan, Luisa, Magalie and Karim, it can be found in all these alternative environments of schooling. We see them sweat, to try, succeed, fall, get up. We are witnessing little miracles. Small victories. That will complete his math 416 to be able to take the bus alone. They are beautiful to see.

This is their story and courageous each and every one of which I wanted to talk to you. And it is to them that I address you now : you are my hero.

Chantal Morasse is assistant director of career Space and the president of the Alliance of alternative environments of schooling in Quebec.