"A teacher has been attacked again because he's a teacher, in his school. People need to take in the gravity of what has just happened," said Sophie Vénétitay, the general secretary of the French teachers' union (SNES-FSU), on the French public radio station France Inter on Friday, October 13. "[The victims] did what motivates all of us: to protect students," she added.

These few minutes on the air summed up the horror that gripped the entire teaching profession in the wake of the attack that took place that morning at the Lycée Gambetta-Carnot in Arras, northern France, killing one teacher and wounding three others. Dominique Bernard taught French at the school where the assailant had been a pupil.

This tragedy comes three years almost to the day after the death of Samuel Paty, a teacher who was murdered on October 16, 2020, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a suburb of Paris, by a radical Islamist terrorist. Teachers are still struggling to describe how they feel.

The teaching community is once again in mourning. Some admit they "can't find the words." Others have the painful feeling that history is repeating itself. "When will we wake up from this nightmare?" asked Marie Cuirot, a history and geography teacher in Paris, who read a text at the national tribute to Samuel Paty in 2020. "I said to myself 'It's not possible, once again, this will never end'," said Odile Deverne, who teaches French at Lycée Montebello in Lille and heads the local SNES-FSU union.

Still stunned by the event, teachers are beginning to wonder what will happen next. How will they deal with their pupils on Saturday morning and then again on Monday? During the tribute to Samuel Paty, a moment for teachers to talk to each other had been envisaged on the day classes resumed, but this was discarded last minute in favor of welcoming students to class immediately before a minute's silence. This change of heart deeply upset the teaching community, who still talk about it.

How to deal with returning to the classroom was discussed in a meeting between the unions and the French Minister of Education, Gabriel Attal. The meeting lasted almost three hours. The teachers' unions stressed the need for a time of exchange between teachers on Monday. "It's a very difficult time for all teachers, and it comes on top of the tribute to Samuel Paty," said Vénétitay, who is calling for part of the morning classes to be suspended. "We're going to need to get together to talk it over amongst ourselves, then prepare for what's to come."

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