A course to restore a taste for school in priority zones

Dear Captains,
It is with great joy and emotion that we share this superb news with you: Le Sens de l'Ecole is the 2024 winner of the Tenzing Prize for Equal Opportunity!
This prestigious and demanding prize has been awarded for 7 years to agents of change who have an impact on reducing educational and social inequalities. It's an honor to join the community of winners, and a real chance to benefit from multi-year support and strategic guidance.
Thank you too, dear Captains, for believing in us!

Dear Captains,
With your support, we have just passed not 1 but 3 important milestones:
- the milestone of 4 years of existence for our association
- the milestone of 40 members in the crew: 3 salaried employees and 3 freelancers to steer it, 35 mentors and speakers to carry it out in the field
- the milestone of 4,000 children accompanied since the start of the school year (and nearly 12,000 since the association was founded!)
... we would have liked to add the milestone of 40 workshops run in a single day, but in truth, our maximum was 31 (and that's already a lot!)
Thank you for blowing the wind into our sails!

We're very late (it's been a busy back-to-school season!) AND very proud to share with you some key figures from our activity report for the 2022-2023 school year!
We've really gone all out (to say the least) to meet the explosion in demand from schools, while maintaining our pedagogical excellence.
2022-2023 means:
- more than 4,000 children supported (193 classes of CM1-CM2-6e in priority education in 5 departments of Ile-de-France); 
- 82% of teachers who consider our program very important in a student's school career; 
- 85% of teachers who wanted to renew this year.
With 175 classes already in the planning stage, the year 2023-2024 promises to be very intense. For months, we've been preparing to rise to the challenges ahead: we can't wait to relay the rest of the adventure to you!
To read our activity report in full, it's this way:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JefXZjlEUa5i-0YFCZ8jmTXi0V9WY7N_/view?usp=sharing
A huge thank you to the entire Captains community for rallying to help us grow in impact!

Yes, the teacher training courses have already resumed and the first classroom workshops start this week. The September marathon is behind us - so breathless and rhythmic that we ran out of time to communicate. We even forgot to take a few souvenir photos of our back-to-school highlights 😅
Welcome to the 16 speakers joining the team ! A successful casting of great professionals and beautiful people, whom we had a real joy of getting to know better during the training weekend on September 23-24.
And happiness to meet up again with the 14 speakers from previous promotions at our continuing education and year launch evening on September 26!  
Among them, 7 have become mentors and benefited from a dedicated training day on September 16.
Backstage, throughout September:
- we finalized the production of all our teaching materials for students, teachers and speakers;
- we prepared the ground with inspectors, principals and teachers who are waiting for us with bated breath (85% renewal rate!)
Thanks to all of you, dear Captains, we're ready 🙌
Forwards to a new school year full of meaning!

Our plenary day took place on June 30 and it was a real party!!!!
🎉 FÊTE to meet up again (almost) all of us after having criss-crossed the Ile de France each on our own for 8 months : the association's core team, the 7 mentors and 15 speakers
🎉 CELEBRATING those 1158 hours spent in 193 classes with 4150 children, and all the "hidden" hours preparing, pottering, planning (replanning), meeting, accompanying teachers before / during / after
🎉 CELEBRATING to share our glitches and above all our nuggets
🎉 CELEBRATING to discover our tangible, concrete impact, measured through 4 research devices
🎉 CELEBRATING to think together to build tomorrow.
And if our hearts are sad to see some members of the crew leave for new adventures, they are full of gratitude that all our unique trajectories have made such a firework display this year.
🎉 and this CELEBRATION, we wanted to share with you, dear Captains, and say a big thank you again for making our action possible with CM1-CM2-6e children in Priority Education in Ile de France!

Dear Captains, 
The school year is (almost) coming to an end, and we've already accompanied 3,600 students in the Ile de France region since September 2022! 
Beyond quantitative targets (and the frenzy of daily life...), we've been keen since the launch of the association to keep a sense of perspective to analyze the real impact of our ongoing action.Since September, we've collected:
- 670 workshop evaluation questionnaires from our facilitators;
- evaluation questionnaires from teachers.
We've also conducted no fewer than 57 individual interviews with priority education children, in collaboration with a researcher and a Master 2 student in psychology! We're enjoying listening to them, while we wait for the analysis of this data, which will take some time...
To give you a little taste, here are a few testimonials from children filmed last year in Aulnay-sous-Bois.
Happy discovery and thank you Captains for your support!

Since the start of the 2022-2023 school year, our team of 22 facilitators has led workshop courses in 80 CM1, CM2 and 6e classes in priority education. In total, this represents 480 hours of activities with 1850 children. 60 other workshop courses are already scheduled for the return of the February vacations... Our goal is to have accompanied 200 classes by the end of the year!
Wondering about the meaning of school is essential for motivation! We manage to engage students in challenging reflections by taking small steps, in a playful, active and cooperative way.