Hi
everyone!
Where
has the time gone? It seriously shocks me that I’ll be home in two weeks and back at Duke (my other
home!) in three weeks. Our group has
definitely been trying to make the best of the little time we have left.
Derek
and I have been making progress on our report! We managed to line up and
conduct three interviews this past week with a former principal of Blessington
(one of the four divested ET schools), a person from NICIE (the Northern
Ireland Council for Integrated Education, which has quite a bit of experience
with transforming schools), and a former principal and a parent of the start-up
group of North Bay (another divested ET school). We gained invaluable insight
from each person and are starting to notice common themes. The report is really
beginning to take form, which is exciting.
Aside
from work, we’ve been around “Dub City,” as our group so affectionately calls
it, quite a bit. On Wednesday, we visited the EMEA (Europe, Middle East,
Africa) Google headquarters with the separated minors. Because our group was so
large, they couldn’t give us a tour of the building, so we sat in a room and
listened to their presentation. It’s amazing to think that Google has grown and
developed so much in just my lifetime. With such an innovative staff, I can’t
even imagine what crazy cool thing they’ll come up with next.
On
Thursday night, we watch The Dark Knight
in the cinema. They were replaying it in preparation for The Dark Knight Rises. After 2.5 hours of sleep, we woke up at 4 AM
to walk to the cinema and watch the very first 5 AM showing of The Dark Knight Rises. The premiere was
at 5 AM because we’re five hours ahead of New York and couldn’t show it before
the NY midnight premiere. As exhausted as everyone was, we agreed that it was
completely worth it. Speaking of Batman, my prayers go out to the victims and
their families who were affected in the recent Aurora, Colorado shooting
tragedy. All of the ET staff, Derek, and I had the live blog up during work and
were following it very closely. It breaks my heart that so many innocent people
were hurt.
Yesterday,
we wandered around Dub City and attended the Street Performance World
Championship in Merrion Square Park. I initially assumed that it would just be
a stage with performers, but it actually was a fair that spanned the entire
park with five different performance areas and a variety of other activities.
Aside from watching some really talented street performers, we jammed out at
the silent disco, hula-hooped, and essentially relived our childhood.
Lots
of exciting things are coming up this week as well! We’re performing a bhangra
dance today (more on that in the next blog post). We’re also watching
Riverdance (SO EXCITED), having dinner with Christine’s brother’s kindergarten
teacher, visiting the zoo, possibly watching Phantom of the Opera… but perhaps,
for me, the most exciting thing is that the Minister for Education will be
making an announcement early this upcoming week on secondary schools. Long
story short, ET has never been a patron of a secondary school because of many
complicated circumstances. However, it’s very likely this year that ET will be
able to open secondary schools, which would be such a groundbreaking moment in
Ireland’s educational history. We’ve asked to open three secondary schools, so
fingers crossed that the Minister’s announcement will be in our favor.
Smiles,
Anna
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