(This article was published in 'Celebrating 50 Years in St Louise's' by St Louise de Marillac NS. An excerpt was published in 'Leadership+' by IPPN in 2018, 2019)
All children are great. But the children in Ballyfermot are fantastic. And the children in St Louise de Marillac Primary School in Ballyfermot are the most fantastic of all. They have so enriched my life with their good humour, their resilience and their 'can do' attitudes. Once in a while they have made me cry, but most of the time they made me laugh.
After my Leaving Certificate I was offered Pharmacy through the CAO system and was also offered a place in St. Patrick's Training College in Drumcondra through the separate entry system that was in place at that time. It took me about ten seconds to become the ‘black sheep’ of the family and to decide that I'd give teaching a go. A wise person once said that, if you enjoy your job, you'll never work a day in your life.
And I have been blessed with the choices I made.
I loved my eighteen years teaching in Presentation Primary School in Terenure and made wonderful friends among the school community there. I thrived with the challenges I faced in my three years working as a trade union official in the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) led by the capable trio of Joe O'Toole, Catherine Byrne and John Carr. A different type of work offered new and interesting experiences while spending two years in the curriculum development unit of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), working alongside another powerful trio of Anne Looney, Sarah FitzPatrick and John Hammond. But I found my spiritual home as principal in St Louise's Junior School in Ballyfermot in September 2002.
Established by the truly inspirational Daughters of Charity who follow their mission in caring for the under-privileged, as espoused by St Louise and St Vincent de Paul, I had arrived in a place where my educational and life values could be lived out every day. After my great friend, mentor and colleague Sr Justine retired in 2012, I had the privilege of becoming principal of the newly-amalgamated school that encompassed Early Start (pre-school) to 6th class.
In January 2018, I ‘rewired’ and ‘left the building’ to follow a new chapter in my life to pursue my own writing interests, as well as following my passion to turn children into published authors. I can now admit that incidents and happenings in St Louise’s have triggered many a story for me over the years, both fictional and ‘creative’ non-fiction. However, in anything I write, names have been changed, to protect the identity of the children and their families.
One of the funniest exchanges took place between me and a boy in first class a number of years ago. Simon (I've never met a ‘Simon’ in St Louise's!) had a chronic pattern of poor school attendance. He travelled by bus to school every day from Cherry Orchard, so I had no chance of meeting his parents in the morning. I had tried phoning his parents, but the number we had been given was not answering. I sent letters and got no reply, the Home School Liaison teacher had called to the house on a number of occasions, but the door was never answered. One day when Simon was in school, I expressed my delight to see him there. The exchange went something like this:
"Simon, well done. Good man yourself, it's great to see you in school. We've all missed you. Where were you? Why weren't you in school for the past few days?"
"Ah, sure I couldn't come, Mrs Crowley."
"Why not? Were you sick, Simon?"
"No, I wasn't sick, but Snotty (pronounced Snohhy) Nose was sick."
"Pardon? Who was sick?"
"Snotty Nose, me horse."
"Oh, right. I see. Well, even if Snotty Nose is sick, you still have to come to school yourself. Your teacher and your friends really miss you when you're not here," I answered.
"Ah Jayz, Mrs. Crowley, sure I didn't even know yiz were open!"
"We're open every day, Simon. Well, except Saturday and Sunday. Will you come every other day so, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. OK?"
"Ah grand. I'll see what I can do, Mrs Crowley."
And sometimes he came and sometimes he didn't. But the days he was in, he brightened up the school with the gift of his presence.
On a side note, one of my bug-bears is that the National Educational Welfare Board (NEWB) has no remit around enforcing school attendance until a child is six years old. By then, unfortunately, a small number of children have already missed out on almost two years of the building blocks, the foundation of the primary school curriculum. The pattern of poor school attendance has already been embedded in their young lives and the children have somehow absorbed the message that school attendance is optional. When they do come to school, they know that they are academically behind their peers and they have missed out on so many chances to socialise and to make friends and the pattern of poor school attendance then becomes a vicious cycle. Children of four and five years of age can't get themselves up and out to school, even though they want to come. I believe that all children of school-going age should be taken under the remit of the NEWB before too long, as the current system continues to fail this small number of children whose parents don't have either the capacity or the inclination to send them to school regularly.
During my fifteen years in St Louise’s, when I used to call in to visit the classes, the children often wanted to tell me stories. A favourite one in the junior classes was when a child's tooth fell out and the tooth fairy came. Being the teacher, I tried to turn as many of my daily encounters as I could into 'teaching moments'. One day, a little girl in first class was telling me that her tooth had fallen out the day before and that the tooth fairy had visited during the night and left money under her pillow. About ten other hands went up to tell me their version of similar events.
I said, "Ok, I'm going to give a prize to anyone who knows how many teeth you'd have if you had all of the teeth that you're supposed to have and if none of them had fallen out yet."
They took a few seconds to think about it before a number of hands went up. I was delighted to see the hand of a little quiet girl, Rosemary (another uncommon name!) who had never put up her hand to answer a question of mine before.
"Rosemary, what do you think? How many teeth would you have?"
"You'd have loads, Mrs Crowley," she answered very definitely, nodding her head sagely as she answered.
Needless to say, she got a prize along with Josephine (never came across one either!) who got the correct answer, as always.
Another time one of our second classes was doing a project on the Titanic as it was coming up to the centenary of its sinking. I asked if anyone knew how it had sank. A number of hands went up. One girl was insistent on catching my attention and was waving her arm up and down madly. I asked her why it sank.
“I know, Miss. It was just going along minding its own business when it hit an ice cube and Bam! It just sank.”
As principal, I tried to be conscious of not interrupting classes too much by announcements on the intercom. However, one day I went on the intercom to announce about the upcoming book fair. The teacher in senior infants told me that her class were in the middle of their Aistear free play session (all early educators in Ireland will identify with this time of organised bedlam when an amazing amount of learning taking place). There was a buzz of activity in the classroom when my voice interrupted. One of the little girls said very loudly,
“Shh. Everyone be quiet. I can’t hear what Mrs Crowley is saying on the dot com!” Apparently, everybody listened up!
We are a DEIS Band 1 (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) school and recognised by the Department of Education as one of the schools in the country requiring extra supports in order to give our children an equal opportunity to achieve their potential. One of these supports comes in the form of a monetary DEIS grant that the school can spend to offer various types of supports to our children. We choose to spend a big proportion of our grant to subsidise the PiPS (Psychologists in Primary Schools) scheme. A student of psychology is placed in the school for two days a week to do his/her clinical hours under the supervision of a clinical psychologist. The psychologist offers non-directive therapy to the children and offers the medium of art or play to allow the children some space to talk through issues that may be bothering them, to process traumatic events or simply to leave the classroom for thirty minutes and give them (and perhaps their teachers and classmates!) some head-space. It has proven to be a very successful intervention.
In the early days of the scheme, I myself was probably hesitant when I approached parents about offering consent for their child to attend the sessions. I wasn't sure how to describe it to them. I suppose I had my own Irish adult hang-up about calling it 'therapy'. However, very soon, a number of the children themselves were looking to attend, especially those in the senior classes. They knew from talking to their friends that it was a relaxing, non-threatening space where they had time to talk and they wanted to try it out for themselves.
One such girl I will call Mary (as we had none in our school). She came to me early on in sixth class and told me about some of the difficulties she was experiencing at home and among her peer group. I asked her how she thought we might be able to help her in school.
"I'd like to try some of that Talk Therapy that's on every Monday," she answered, very matter-offactly.
I thought it was a brilliant name for the intervention, especially for the girls in the senior classes. It proved to help her enormously, precisely because she was so open to getting the help and support that she knew she needed at that time. She has thrived and has done marvellously well in post-primary school and is heading for college. Her “Talk Therapy” at the age of twelve perhaps helped her to thrive.
The well-being and mental health of all of our young people must be looked after in today's Ireland. How do our primary schools help Mary and the significant numbers of our children who have experienced trauma? How can we expect them to sit in class and learn their multiplication tables when they are trying to process feelings of loss, despair and perhaps even self-harm? Why should we expect them to conform to inane school rules and not to act out, when what they really need is to be heard and to get some attention? Often, particularly during the summer months, the media abounds with headlines and parenting advice about preparing children for school. They talk about school readiness and list off attributes that all of the little darlings who have graduated from pre-school in June must magically acquire during July and August to be ready for 'big school' on the 1st of September.
I believe that we need to turn this idea on its head. Why do our children need to be ready for school? Instead, like I firmly believe St Louise’s is, shouldn't all our schools be ready to meet the needs of our children and to be supported to do so? Recent educational research refers to ‘trauma-informed’ and ‘nurturing’ schools. St Louise’s was exactly such a school before the terms were coined.
St Louise’s has a wonderful dedicated staff, right through from teachers to Special Needs Assistants (SNAs) to childcare assistant to school secretaries, caretaker and cleaners, to the School Completion staff who together create a safe and stable environment for all the children in the school, including those who may have experienced adverse life events. Staff make sure that children like Donal has eaten a breakfast every morning before he is asked to do his Jolly Phonics and to be jolly while he's learning them. They make time to offer a listening ear to children who may be homeless or who live in a household where a parent may be going through a tough time themselves and abusing substances.
Schools can make a difference in a child's life and alter what might otherwise be a pre-determined life trajectory. St. Louise de Marillac in Ballyfermot has proven time and again that, given the necessary resources, both human and monetary, schools have a vital role to play in the lives of our children and young people in a modern Ireland. Far and away above implementing the national curriculum, with achieving what it has achieved in its significant gains in literacy and numeracy achievements, it offers some of our vulnerable children access to ‘the one significant caring adult’ in their lives that the research recommends, it teaches children and young people emotional self-regulation, it offers and refer children to therapeutic support services.
But schools like St. Louise’s can only do that if we all agree that there is more to school than churning out ‘A’ students and that the main priority is not necessarily scoring highly on academic international reading and mathematics tests. It is about educating and caring for the whole child, meeting them and caring for them as a person at the point of where they are at, at the school door and guiding them to a brighter future, helping them to realise their full potential.
I wish St Louise’s a bright and caring future. It is in excellent hands under the leadership of my successor Alma Quinn.
Kathryn Crowley (Principal 2002-2017)