Off to School

This morning the Young Ambassador house was a bit hectic, you had five of us running around getting ready and trying to be as best prepared for the day as we could be. Conversations were bouncing back and forth as people went up and down the stairs sometimes stopping mid sentence as someone remembered a forgotten coat or notebook. Andres was headed off to the cathedral again and the rest of us decided to head to the Centre for breakfast and WiFi; as most of us were meeting up with our various placements there at half past nine. I'm sure the neighbors were thrilled as we headed noisily down the road all very excited for what we'd be doing that day talking a mile a minute. After what was fast becoming the morning routine of breakfast and coffee at the St. Patrick's centre, we were all headed our separate ways for the day. Sadly Alexis and I had to part ways today as well, she was headed back to Down News while I would be spending the day learning about the education and youth programs here in Downpatrick. Heading up the hill in a direction I'd yet to explore I was hoping I had read my quickly drawn map correctly and wasn't about to get lost, but I made it to the Patrician Youth Centre without incident where I met Richard the sort of "second in command" of the program as the Director is currently out of town. Richard is originally from South Africa but moved to N. Ireland and has been working for the Patrician Youth Centre for a couple years now. After a brief conversation about what they had in store for me I was sent up the road to the Primary school, Our Lady and St. Patrick. Once I was signed in with the front desk I was taken to a P7 class, who I would be spending the school day with.

A little about the school system here, kids start in what is called Primary and they go all the way up to Primary Seven or P7, at this stage they would move up to "High school" which would go until 16ish and then students would have the option to do A levels or their GCSE's before going to university at about 18yrs. While we tend to use college and university interchangeable here in the states, in N. Ireland there is a distinction with College coming first and then University.

The class that I was with was completing a few different assignments, an "about me" picture collage, a compilation of what they had completed and accomplished that year and then an "in 15 years" writing assignment. Their classroom set up was several low tables with seats and students could move around as they needed, for example if they were working on a collage and one of the class iPads needed to be plugged in to an outlet to work on it. While the kids were working I sat with some of them and chatted about what they had been doing, of course there were side conversations about music, celebrities and many questions about America. While the kids had a 10 minute break an aid came in to watch them, as it was raining they had to stay inside but did have the option to don a specific "buddy" hat and go to other classes with the younger students. I went for a quick cuppa with the other teachers, the popular topic of discussion was the PTA fundraiser coming up and last nights episode of Love Island; which thanks to Alexis (Albany) I was caught up on. After the break instead of going outside for sports the kids did a comprehension exercise, listening to a song and then discussing what it might mean and what they thought the singer was singing about. I really enjoyed listening to them discuss and share their thoughts and as their teacher said "there's no wrong answers". Over all I enjoyed getting to sit in on their class and I think I learned a lot from the kids about how their school works as well as what the normal Primary school age culture is. After school let out I headed over to the Patrician Youth Centre for their after school program, I met some of the staff and children while finding out a lot about what their programs aim to do as well as how they operate. I was able to spend time doing crafts and sports with the kids which was the perfect way to get to know them and hear about the program through their eyes.

After finishing up with the program I headed back to home base, and despite the rain Alexis, Katherine, Lexi, Andres and I headed up to the store as we needed a few things such as toilet paper and of course more food. Provisions obtained we headed back to the house and all went about making dinner before gathering around the TV to watch Love Island, Alexis of course did some gloating in good fun for getting us all hooked on the program. It was a nice ending to a busy day, everyone gathered together joking and laughing over a silly program.