by Graziella Pettinati

A) Why approach teachers?

In the information age, professors are, without a doubt, among the last professionals who still have the privilege of reading and correcting many handwritten texts. And so, until all students have laptop computers under their arms, professors will be able to continue to be amazed and to wonder as they contemplate different handwriting styles.

Over the course of my sixteen years of teaching at the high school and junior college levels, I was often fascinated by the variety of my students' handwriting specimens. It seemed to me that within those marks left on the paper was important information which was inaccessible to to me. After many years of study in graphology and many awareness-raising workshops offered to various professionals (professors, counselors, career counselors, ...) I became certain that graphology is an indispensable tool for all professionals who work with handwritten texts, and most especially for teachers.

Since I began giving workshops to teachers, I've noticed that teachers develop, with experience, an “intuitive” knowledge of writing. So when I present them with five different handwriting specimens from students of the same age (17 to 18 years-old) , most teachers (over 80%) easily find which will succeed the best and which will have the most difficulty. Moreover, certain ones of them are even able to explain why (for example: the way the page is organized, clarity of thought, simplification, ...).

After such successful workshops, I understood how important an introductory course in graphology (45 hours or three university credit hours) would be valuable to teachers as well as to future teachers. That's how I had the idea to put together an introductory graphology course for primary school teachers (incomplete mastery of graphic gesture) and for secondary school teachers (mastery of graphic gesture) because the approaches and needs are different. As much as a good knowledge of children's drawing is important at the primary school level, it is practically useless at the secondary level. Nonetheless, an understanding of the basics of graphology: symbolism of space, pressure, slant, size, ... is indispensable at all levels!

B) What can we offer teachers?

The graphological tool is valuable to teachers because it enables them :

To detect more quickly those students who have learning or behavioral difficulties and to refer them to other professionals (psychologist, social worker, guidance counselor ...) if needed.

Graphology doesn't make the teacher a better educator, but it is one more instrument in his “toolbox”!

C) How do we proceed?

The first step is to get into the schools . The best way is still to offer free workshops to small groups of teachers. The absolute best is to begin with people you know and who trust you. It could be friends or even teachers at the schools your children and grandchildren attend!

Once we have established our credibility, it's much easier to contact teachers' unions, associations or groupings in order to offer our services. At first, the leaders are skeptical, but faced with the results and interest their members have after their first exposure to graphology, they're quickly convinced.

That's how I was able to give two workshops last June to more than a hundred teachers, principals, guidance counselors, and government workers from the Ministry of Education. The workshops were given within the framework of the 18th Colloquium of Junior College Teachers in which more than 600 professionals from the junior college teaching realm participated. The workshops were so successful that the organizers asked me to write some articles for their magazine, “Pédagogie collégiale” during the course of 1999.

This activity had a “snowball effect”. Certain participants asked me for personal analyses, others requested I give the workshop at their schools. Such positive results only confirmed how well-founded my undertaking was, and encouraged me to set my sights even higher.

And so my ultimate objective is to convince the Faculty of Education to include an introductory course of graphology in the training program for teachers. Once this step has been accomplished, it will be much easier to create ties with other counseling professionals (psychologists, career counselors ...).

D) Conclusion

Teachers just want to know about graphology! So it's up to us to offer them adequate training. It's not a question of training graphologists, but of making professionals aware of the advantages of better understanding handwriting.

In this way, not only will we help teachers which in turn can help the students who study under them, but we'll also contribute to making graphology better known!