La classe de Madame Lise

Their names are Rafik, Solace, Rahat, Jessica and Adonay. They are six years old. They live in Parc Extension, a multi-ethnic neighborhood in the heart of Montreal. They are Madame Lise’s students. For an entire school year, director Sylvie Groulx observes their learning, watches them live. Thus, it testifies to the patient work of a teacher simply dealing with new urban realities: children of diverse ethnic origins, major cultural differences, learning French in a family environment ignorant of this language. The class of Madame Lise is also the good will of a group of disparate children, the complicities that are woven in the difference, the knowing smiles, the sulks and the mockery devoid of malice. Madame Lise’s class is finally the portrait of Lise Coupal, a warm and attentive teacher, tolerant but firm, happy to discover in a shy boy a potential that she did not suspect.