James Connolly is an alumnus of Errigal College and is attending class that day. Like Jack Bond, he also wanted to leave school, but today he studies at university and sometimes comes to give advice to college students knowing how to find the right words: “If you come here thinking you don’t like school, it’s a trap and it’s going to really trap you, you’re going to hate it, he says to the schoolboy who is hesitating about his future. On the other hand, if you tell yourself that it’s a place that will help you, it’s the key to your independence.” On all the walls of this Irish college, the same message: “Every student counts, every day.“
This establishment has the means, thanks to the DEIS program (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) which aims to ensure equal opportunities at school by taking care of the educational needs of disadvantaged groups. Four teachers supervise twenty students, as, for example, in a math class. “The teachers work together and the students help each other. It’s like a big family, a group work”says Professor Kelly White to the magazine “We, the Europeans” (replay).
“If I had children, I would really like them to be like you”
Support for students goes far beyond the walls of the school. Maggie McAteer, liaison officer with the families, meets Jack’s mother that day to offer her to arrange her schooling with professional internships in order to give her time to think. Considering a year of transition finds the consent of the teenager, who thinks of this solution to work a little bit. “There are two work experiences during the year?” asks the mother. Maggie confirms and says to the youth: “The fact that your father is an electrician is great to help you find an internship.”
“Initially, I was so afraid to let her into my house, confides Kate Bond. I was afraid that she would judge the cleanliness of the house but she is so friendly that she is part of the family.” The liaison officer, who sometimes wears the clothes of a social worker, explains his approach: “I enter their homes with respect. I don’t arrive with answers. I try to make things easier and to participate in the journey of parents so that they help their children. I have always said to the students: ‘I I don’t have kids myself, but if I had, I would really like them to be like you’.”
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