CUTE Magazine - Winter 2018

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2. Comité pour la rémunération des internats et des stages de l’Université du Québec en Outaouais.

since they see the intern only for some hours throughout the entire work experience. In brief, it is the supervisor who’s in charge of emitting the final grade to the department of education, but it is the associate teacher who, in reality, holds considerably more weight in the evaluation. This significant power greatly influences the intern’s experience. For instance, it could become difficult, even risky for an intern to stand their ground in front of an associate teacher practicing pedagogic and educational methods different from theirs. Even so, the internship should be an occasion to apply the strategies learned through their university education and to actualize them. That is, at least, the rhetoric that universities provide when they present internships, whereas the reality is quite different. This relationship of subordination favors the emergence of situations of abuse reported by some colleagues. Rather than rely on the good faith and the kindness of the evaluators, we should implement mechanisms that prevent the appearance of such situations. Grade revision: truly effective? If the student wishes to request a grade revision, the situation is only worsening as the outcome of the process doesn’t appear to have any impact on previous evaluations. At UQO, the procedure comes down to a first reevaluation by the same person who gave the internship’s final grade, followed by the formation of a comity leaning over the question again if the student is appealing the decision. Nonetheless, the comity doesn’t have the necessary resources to properly review the evaluation of the internship since it wasn’t present during its realization. The whole represents a financial charge of 80$ for the student, which is almost equivalent to an eight-hour of work on minimum

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wage! Moreover, taking into account the fact that the department isn’t shouting the existence of the grade revision program from the rooftops, few students know about it and use it to challenge the evaluators’ judgement. Bad grades cause ills Unfair evaluations and difficult internship situations may indeed have an influence on the professional development and the well-being of students. In fact, according to a survey conducted by the CRIS-UQO2, 38.4% of respondents stated that they had or should have reached out for psychological support because of their internship. According to us, the weight of their evaluations could be one of the factors at play. Thus, these various scenarios have negative repercussions, such as mental and physical health disorders (anxiety, depression, weight loss, low selfesteem, etc.) and cast doubt on interns’ professional choices. Thereby, in addition


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