Bringing it all Back Home

Some materials donated to Saul and Dave's classrooms by the WAVE Trauma Centre

Speak Your Mind, a collection of stories and photography by Belfast children and teens

Danielle's photograph in Speak Your Mind

Page facing Danielle's photo in Speak Your Mind

My lifelong friend Anastasia, a dual citizen from Texas now living in Tobercurry, County Sligo, recalls the way that Ireland saved her from a life she never wanted. She was a producer at HBO at the time. She had just spent a solid day choosing among naked women for a stripper sequence on a show and she was sick of that life. She quit, bought a ticket for Shannon Airport and was in Galway the following day, name-dropping and buying every round at the Quays in the Latin Quarter until her friend grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out onto the cobblestone streets to tell her she was making an arse of herself, that this was Galway, not Hollywood. That no one name-drops here, that no one buys every single round. That moment was a major turning point for her, a lecture she feels she needed to hear. "Galway" became a synonym in her mind for living honestly and humbly, for being real. She lived there for many years after, and met her husband, a tech director at the Druid Theatre. They moved up to a lovely farmhouse in Tobercurry just a few months ago, with a beautiful blonde German Shepherd puppy.

We learn lessons from Ireland, and carry them in our hearts. Once Ireland gets inside you, it doesn't go away. Today's post will be the first of several in which I discuss how the grant will affect our teaching here in the States.

Alan McBride at the WAVE Trauma Centre gave us a suitcase worth of materials of an intimacy and accessibility that we would not be able to find anywhere else. Scores of ordinary citizens of Belfast attempt to heal themselves by telling the stories of their wounded and dead and also the stories of what they love about Belfast. 

So far, I am especially taken by the book Speak Your Mind. It is a collection of photographs and very short writings by children and teenagers living in Belfast. I saw it as an opportunity for an inquiry activity in which our students bring up questions about Belfast based on what they see in this text early in the unit, questions that will help them guide their own learning about Northern Ireland, sectarianism and the Troubles as the unit progresses. 

But my colleague Kirk had an even better idea. Our students should do their own photos and explanations of their own inner-city neighborhoods, creating documents of their New Haven that can later be used to help them understand and empathize with these other young people and their Belfast. Two cities full of both love and violence, as all cities are. Understandings across race and sect, getting at what is universally human underneath it all.

I will continue to report on the use of these and other materials as we begin to apply them in our classes.

Saul and Anastasia at her farmhouse in Tobercurry, County Sligo