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Giving Hope

St Dominic’s Trade School offers alternative education programme. Story and photos By Lara Pickford-Gordon,  lpgordon.camsel@rcpos.org

There are children who end up in care at institutions and, for different reasons, are unable to continue schooling in the formal education system. The St Dominic’s Trade School alternative education programme fills the gap but more than this, the private school aims to give “hope” to the children entering its doors whether their stay is temporary or for a couple years.

The Catholic News spoke to co-ordinator of the programme Ricardo Mader recently at the school, located at Belmont Circular Road.

The alternative education programme offered today for children of primary school age and up to 14 years, began humbly with remedial classes in reading twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursdays, for residents of the St Dominic’s Children’s Home and pupils of the then St Martin’s Government Primary who were falling behind.

Private teachers worked with them until they improved and returned to their regular classes. The programme started as “self-help” but “developed into a unique school within itself,” Mader said.

The increasing need for literacy skills in children unable to keep up in the formal education system coupled with the expanding needs of minors referred to St Dominic’s by the court system or Children’s Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (CA), led to the programme evolving into “a semi-special education unit”.

The challenges to learning include responding to trauma from things they witnessed in the home and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. “The list is extensive,” Mader said.

The “basic objective” of the school is to help the children unable to cope in primary schools. There is an assessment for new intake to determine whether they can return to the conventional school setting.  Mader said, “We get kids who were in school and taken out. They say ‘yes, I was in Standard Five’ and when we assess them their academic level is like infants.”

He explained, “It was not just a matter of helping some of the kids who were struggling in their school but you had to actually create a programme for them because they would have been lost in mainstream school due to the educational gaps they had and also behaviour modification needed…So the initiative to create a learning resource centre that is what developed into a four-day week.”

Many children because of age cannot be mainstreamed, so vocational training developed and what is now called the Alternative Education Programme. The children who have aged out of primary school and not inclined to subject offerings are referred to vocational programmes like Servol and MiLAT (Military-Led Academic Training Academy).

‘Chalk and Talk’ cannot work

A fire in April 1995 caused a temporary halt to the programme. Enron oil and gas company came forward to support refurbishment of a building on the compound (the current site of the Catholic Religious Education Development Institute and Catholic Education Board of Management). The programme continued at this location until it was moved to another site on the property.

The curriculum follows the standard curriculum providing tuition in reading, Mathematics and Language Arts but is also very flexible because ‘chalk and talk’ cannot work.

“Part of our goal is to mainstream the kids so we need to know what they need to know at a particular time however, we modify to suit the kids’ ability.”

There is a set curriculum to be completed within an academic year; this cannot work at the St Dominic’s school. Mader commented, “We have kids here [where] that cannot happen; it’s more or less going at their own pace as they are only able to acquire that knowledge and really understand.”

Culinary skills and gardening are ways to teach Math and reading “so when they go back to the classroom and things are explained it is clearer for them”.

Different exercises are used to engage the children, for example the wall of a corridor has the names of children broken down into acronyms and the children had to find adjectives for each letter to describe themselves.

There are currently 13 children attending classes, and nine teachers with training to deal with trauma and behaviour concerns. Children can be sent from the court or CA at any time; how long they stay is not certain. The outcome of court matters can result in children being removed and sent back to their homes.

Mader said, “We get them at any time during the course of the year; once they are brought here if they were already in school and can continue, we have those who will go to school outside; but there are kids who have educational and behavioural gaps that will not allow them to fit into a classroom.”

The counsellors and psychologists of the social work office, help the pupils with behaviour problems. There is also mentorship from the dean, Andrew Homer. Homer said, “The space provides a place of stability for the children and an opportunity to grow when they leave here.”

The St Dominic’s Trade school also runs a homework programme on evenings, four days weekly. Children from the Home and a few from the community participate. The focus is children preparing for the Secondary Entrance Assessment and the first years of secondary school. The tuition is sponsored by Kiss Baking Company, which provides a stipend for tutors and snacks. Mader commented this year will be three years of sponsorship and thanked the company.

Success stories

The school has “quite a few” success stories; former pupils who went on to tertiary education and the workforce. Several of them ended up in the Fire Service, some try entrepreneurship.

“What we found for the cross section of kids we get, it is a matter of giving them hope, giving them something they can leave here with… Our thing is apart from the literacy if we can give them some sort of skill at least they have an option, an opportunity in life.”

Mader stressed the impact of the social skills acquired, and sense of self-worth. He has encountered former pupils who though not working “are doing their best to hold on and not to go, as we say, the wrong way of life.”

Mader has been involved in the programme since inception and while at times it can be “overwhelming” he and the other teachers see the job as a vocation.  “I believe the programme tries to reach those children who, if we leave them alone, would end up being in drugs or crime, so it is more of a mission to give hope to someone, to a soul, respect for human life, respect for education.”