Touching souls…

On touching souls, the importance of education and understanding kindness…

I have received a lot of love and attention in the last few days.  My post “La classe de 5e…” has been shared over 17,000 times. I have received hundreds of messages thanking me.

I am deeply touched by all this. I will try to not become pretentious about this short-lived moment of popularity. My narcissism wants to explode and i won’t let it.

I have been writing for 13 years on Facebook.  I write to understand life. I write about the real events in my life. I embrace, accept and share real emotions.   I try to be honest and authentic.

This morning, I am trying to make sense of what happened. Why did “La classe de 5e…” touch so many souls all over the world? I got messages from Quebec, France, Belgium, Switzerland, even Rwanda.  I think it’s because, in these 1000 words, I really captured the essence of what teaching is about and how difficult it is to be a good teacher.  This idea, this emotion resonated within the hearts of so many people. It’s beautiful for a single person to be able to touch so many souls with an honest true story. It tells me that words are powerful. Thank you.

I often have trouble managing one kid, my own. Imagine managing AND educating two dozen. Teaching is probably one of the most unappreciated, unrecognized and unvalued profession in the world. And yet… it is one of the most important in this world.

We desperately need good teachers in classrooms around the world if we are to unite humanity in the biggest challenge we will ever face: to save our planet. 

Good teachers are created in societies who believe, value and support their work. 

I thought being a doctor is important work because we save lives.

But today, i realize that educating our children is an even more important and meaningful work because through education, we can save the future of our humanity.

Education is the key to change. We need radical change if we are to survive in this next century of global warming, if we want our grandchildren to thrive, to breathe clean air, to drink potable water, to swim in lakes and climb in trees. We, the adults of this world, failed to recognize that the planet is heating up and dying. Now we’ll need our kids to take this challenge. We’ll need well educated kids to save our planets and so, we desperately need good teachers.

Thank you my friends for being here, for taking the time to read my writings.

Before I end this. I have one special thank you that needs to be published.  It’s a special thank you to one special soul.

Thank you Edith Vaillancourt for being here by my side.

Thank you for inspiring and pushing me to write “La classe de 5e”

Thank you for being an awesome kindergarten teacher.

Thank you for helping me become a better father.

Thank you for helping me understand the real meaning and importance of kindness.  You are beautiful. You are the kindest person I know. You bring the best in me and you inspire me.

Thank you.

Original post Facebook, February 2020