Being a role model
The children Monsieur Marin has to work with is indeed a very difficult and diverse lot. He understands that he has been given a problematic task, trying to teach them about how they should act to become a functioning part of society. This, however, is understated, as Marin himself isn’t a good and controlled person. In the beginning of the story, he tried keeping himself under control, yet he lost it more and more frequently as the story proceeds. This is also why the children in the story never learnt anything, since the person trying to teach them how to behave was contradicting the lessons in the way he interacted with them himself.
The importance of learning to know people
The children Marin has does not know how to keep under a lock and key. They are children, after all, and do not have the same attention span as the one the adults have. However, Marin manages to find something he can help the children learn from and become better, which also happens to be something they wish to work on as well; a creative self-portrait essay. This is what makes Marin understand his children and is what essentially helps him teach them.
Social differences
There are a lot of different people in the class Marin has to teach, and they are overall a diverse lot. Not only in personalities, but in families, skin colors, nationalities and family incomes. This is something he must take into consideration delicately to his best ability; however, this seems to become increasingly difficult. All the children are people and needs to be treated as such, no matter the circumstances the child may be in. This is something Marin realizes and has to try to teach his pupils.