Fabrice Bouly
École secondaire Saint-Stanislas

Just imagine for one moment that you could go back in time to your high school years and were given the right to choose your teachers. You would be given the curriculum vitae of each one, and your attention would be drawn to the one-page résumé of personal development teacher Fabrice Bouly, at the bottom of which there is a list of his personal interests: teaching, pirates, human cannonballs, sewing, tightrope walking, cinema, Halloween, psychology, philosophy, useless yet interesting things, old LPs… You’d definitely select him and no doubt say to yourself that the year will be anything but boring.

With his somewhat outlandish appearance, a bold and confident gait and a head brimming with ideas and projects, Fabrice Bouly has only one goal in life: to do what he can to make sure students enjoy their school life and are able to find their true selves. “When I was in high school, I didn’t think that there was a life at school and I missed out on that. Now that I see things from the other side, I want my students to want to get involved in projects that reach out to their community and at the same time strengthen their sense of belonging at school,” recounts the teacher at Saint-Stanislas high school in Saint-Jérôme.

A little bit of a nonconformist - though he prefers to describe himself as a colourful and committed teacher, adding that he makes no pretence whatsoever of wanting to reinvent everything - Fabrice Bouly simply strives to establish ties with young people, young people he finds are beautiful, have something to say and whom he considers to be people in their own right. “Our young people are a source of inspiration and, each in their own way, they have a taste for getting involved. Sometimes it’s just a question of giving them the means of doing so.”

And the means, the 35-year-old teacher has loads of them. The students could speak volumes about the international bolo competition at Saint-Stanislas school, when the winner made 4,700 consecutive hits, or about the two days of piracy, during which the students participated in a treasure hunt, and again about both the plaster day and moustache day, two activities set up as a token of solidarity towards people with wounds or moustaches, but above all just for the fun of it.

“I have always dreamed of working at a fair as either a human cannonball or a tightrope walker. So God knows that I have been working on my physical and mental balance for many years now,” Fabrice points out with a laugh, and showing just how original his actions indeed are.

Because his actions are so important for establishing a link with the community and promoting involvement within it, he just keeps coming up with ideas, such as the famous fund-raiser he conducted with the help of students and for which Fabrice thought of numerous ways for raising money: the sale of barley sugar and Santa Claus hats he and his wife made themselves, a lunchtime choir made up of people who can’t sing, where you had to pay to stop all the racket, and a photo session with the real Santa Claus. Thanks to all these activities, more than $650 was raised and donated to the Club optimiste in Saint-Sauveur.

“I worked three years at a cégep and I have never met anyone like Fabrice, anyone as involved or as dynamic… Basically he’s a teacher who is appreciated by all his students, a family man, an individual with his own sense of fashion, and with leadership and ideas to spare,” sports and recreation technician Valérie Lepage-Barrette points out with admiration.

Another example of one of his original ideas, Fabrice, as the person in charge of the school yearbook, recruited students to knit scarves out of old wool as a way of financing the yearbook. Parents joined the group and a grandmother even went to the school to teach the students how to knit.

For all his projects, Fabrice has obtained the unfailing support of the school administration and of the staff, who are also wholeheartedly involved, and he stresses the need to allow students to get away from the humdrum routine of studying so that they can showcase their skills and talents and bring to light another facet of their personality.

“Despite the fact that for me school left a vast void, I became a teacher to try, in my own way, to give prominence to young people. We must allow them to enliven this living environment, which is such an important part of their lives. To allow them to take initiatives is to allow them to take this environment, and eventually our world, in hand,” the teacher philosophizes.

Fabrice Bouly
École secondaire Saint-Stanislas