It was a trivial gesture: a man strolling down the street and reaching into the inside pocket of his coat. When all he pulled out was his cell phone, Caroline (who wished to remain anonymous, as did all those mentioned by their first names) breathed a sigh of relief. That day, as she led her first-grade pupils to the gymnasium, a week after the murder of Dominique Bernard, a teacher at the Lycée Gambetta in northern France's Arras city, she couldn't help imagining that the individual facing her might have wanted to attack her too. "We're scared, we think it could be aimed at any one of us," said this teacher from Yvelines.

For a profession already deeply shaken by the murder of Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher killed by a terrorist in the greater Paris region suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in 2020, the Arras attack has had the effect of a "terrible earthquake with multiple aftershocks," in the words of Sophie Vénétitay, the head of the leading secondary school union, SNES-FSU. After the shock, the tributes, and a final week of classes punctuated by bomb threats in many schools before the school vacation, the question now arises of the long-term repercussions of the attack as students and teachers returned to class after the fall break on Monday, November 6.

The death of Samuel Paty, murdered for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a class on freedom of expression, had shown teachers that they could be killed for the content of certain teachings; that of Dominique Bernard rooted in them the dizzying idea that they could be targeted simply because of their job. "Our mission with students, the one that drives us every day and to which we give everything we have, was attacked without any pretext. It really made me realize how vulnerable we are," explained Marie Cuirot, a high school history and geography teacher in Paris. Despite a "reaffirmed fighting spirit," she does wonder: "How can we go on?"

"The after-effects are deeper than in 2020," said Elisabeth Allain-Moreno, from the French teachers union SE-UNSA. "When a crisis hits the school, we usually see that it mainly affects staff in morally or professionally fragile situations. This time, the impact is being felt even by people who have no doubts about their commitment to national education."

For many, the repetition of a tragedy that still seemed inconceivable before 2020 has "deepened a rift" that began with Samuel Paty, and added to a weight that many believe will never lighten again.

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