I'm more ecstatic than Wendy. I am reduced to Match of the Day registers of the English language. In short, I am "over the moon" or, as Gaybo might say in his more exuberant moments, "excita and delirra."
Wendy was awarded a Grade A today in foundation level Junior Cert English. No single result earned by a pupil of mine in over 30 years "bouncing at the blackboard" has given me such fulfilment, such joy. I am chuffed.
Wendy has profound learning disabilities. A personable and lively 15-year-old, her spelling belongs more to Old English than modern, but the fertility of her ideas in personal writing is above average. Her spelling and erratic sentence structures in first year condemned her to grade E results in school and class exams.
She came my way in second year. Written work I returned to her over the first few months was like a post-modern and terrifyingly obscure painting. I tried colour codes: red for spellings, green for punctuation, blue for sentence structure. I thought I could systematically cure her problems, one by one, one day at a time. She couldn't cope. I consulted my remedial teacher colleagues. I spoke with my principal, and her mother.
I learned that professional and expensive expertise had identified her problems but had no solutions. I then adopted an academically incorrect approach to Wendy's written work: I made just cursory corrections to an occasional misspelling. I let her choose the poems and novels she liked; we indulged in academic laissez faire. She chose her own syllabus. A splendid actress, she taught me drama and revelled in leading roles in drama exercises.
Convinced that she was a failure, she abandoned school last June. Just 10 seconds after getting her results last week she decided to go back to school. Her self-esteem has gone into orbit. Four respectable grades in ordinary and foundation levels, a C in higher-level Art and an A in foundation level English.
Wendy walked away this morning, preening herself more proudly than her peers who got straight As at higher level. This is the first time she has ever had public estimation of her worth. Wendy has a life.
The credit for this must go to the National Council for Educational Awards and the enlightened inspectors in the Department of Education who devised a Junior Cert curriculum which enables pupils like Wendy to soar rather than sink. Wendy's result is a concrete manifestation of the concept of caring for ALL the children of our nation.
The taste and smell of success is intoxicating today. Tomorrow, though, is another day, another class and another challenge. Would that today could be my Groundhog Day.
