A New Life:A former nun has established a project to help early school-leavers pass their exams, writes Michael Kelly
'A shock to the system" is how Nuala Jackson describes the impact of convent life as she began her novitiate in the Ursuline Convent in Waterford at the tender age of 17.
"I wanted to be a teacher," she says, "and the only teachers that I knew were nuns. I was so young - I didn't know there was a choice between being a teacher and being a nun."
After seven years, she made the difficult decision to leave convent life behind.
"I just didn't think that monastic piety worked or that suppressing your personality and your self was a good thing," she says.
"The nuns around me were idealistic, intelligent women who wanted to teach and they ended up being hated by the children they wanted to help.
"When I left it was complete disgrace. It was considered worse than having a baby outside of marriage back then but people get over these things eventually."
Jackson then got a job as a teacher with a local secondary school.
"It was an all-boys school and I was the only woman there. It was terrible at first. The first post of responsibility I was given was to wash up the cups in the staff room - that is the way female teachers were looked upon back then."
She was to spend more than 30 years teaching at the school and during those years got married and had three children. Later in her career, she became interested in early school-leavers and children marginalised by the school system.
"There is a hierarchical system in place in Irish schools - children are put in uniform, put standing in lines and told what to do. Obedience is paramount.
"I believed we had moved on from that as a society and that there was nothing wrong with these children. If they are leaving school early then you should change the school, not the children.
"Young teachers are full of enthusiasm and inspiration and then they are given a huge class and forced to police it. Increasingly, the job was about writing up what the children did wrong. The wrong tie, wrong shoes, wrong hair-do. Constant nitpicking.
"Kids will do over and above what you expect of them if you let them believe it was their decision to do so. Once you tell them that they must do something, they switch off. It's part and parcel of human dignity to have autonomy over one's life."
One student in her class came from a dysfunctional background and was regularly absent from school.
"He had loads of potential and I said to him, 'I don't care if you don't come to school but I want you to get your Leaving Cert.' I basically hounded him around Waterford, teaching him whenever I could, after school and at weekends. People heard I was doing this and I ended up with seven students who were in similar situations."
Jackson took early retirement and, armed with her pension and grant funding from the Waterford Area Partnership and the Back to Education Initiative, established the XLc Project, committed to teaching early school-leavers full-time.
It now helps about 50 Leaving Cert and 20 Junior Cert students each year and in total over 400 children have finished their exams courtesy of the project. Some 90 per cent of participants achieve a Leaving Cert.
Jackson teaches full-time along with her son and daughter and three volunteers. "Our focus is on the exams although if they are not learning at the same time we are wasting our time. We place a premium on learning outcomes."
The children participating in the XLc project come from a variety of backgrounds.
"They are children who were expelled from school, who failed in school or who left because they were bullied or frightened. We ask the kids when they come in here if they want to get their Leaving Cert and if they say no, we won't take them.
"Our motto is to ignore the failures and reward success, which is the opposite to normal education which always says 'could do better'. My only rules are that they cannot do anything that is against the law.
"They are almost self-regulating so they won't let anyone mess with that. If there are discipline issues, I will bring it to them and they will say 'leave it with us, we will sort that out'.
"There are kids here who would be known to the gardaí but they seem to have their own moral code and they are on our side.
"The class exerts a 'don't upset Nuala' sort of vibe. People say to me that we give them the soft option, that of course they want to come to us where there are no rules rather than go to school. All I can say to that is that we get the results, so why would you deliberately choose the hard way?"
Is she ever tempted to kick back and enjoy her retirement? She looks horrified at the idea.
"I am going to continue doing this until I drop dead. We are always on the verge of closing down due to lack of funds but I have stopped worrying about it.
"There are more important things in life than money. I don't want for anything and I love what I do."
Asked to sum up what she gets from teaching, she replies: "I think everybody wants to be a teacher deep down. To unfold all the knowledge that you have to a young person is the most amazing feeling in the world.
"Besides, if I wasn't here I would have to be at home cleaning the bloody house."