Today, I experienced another Belfast first. Or rather, a Belfast impossiblity, an urban myth... that's right folks, you didn't think he existed: The Cautious Taxi-Driver.

I swear, we sat at the Kennedy Way roundabout this morning for a whole 3 minutes. That's a whole day in taxi-terms! I mean, I like not being killed by crazy reckless driving as much as the next person, but I almost felt sorry for this guy. Obviously no one sent him the memo about how you apparently have to be near suicidal (or homicidal, I suppose) to be a Belfast black taxi driver. I sense an intervention may be needed here. This guy obviously suffers from some serious confidence and lack-of-a-God-complex issues.

Anyway, back to business. I have groups three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Tuesday nights are my group in the Westland, a very Protestant conclave surrounded by nationalist communities in North Belfast. It takes place in a community center, and the young people are the youngest Public Achievement has ever worked with, ranging from (by my amateur judgement) 8-12 years old, all girls. Generally, they have been the sweetest and easiest of all my three groups. It's been a lot of fun to work with them. The first session we (Zulema and myself) were there, 3 weeks ago, one girl grabbed my arm as we were leaving and said "I don't want you to go! I like you!" An incredibly sweet introduction to my PA coaching career.

Oh, it's all been downhill from there. Not necessarily with this group, though this Tuesday's session was a bit more challenging as Zulema was away in Denmark and naturally the girls picked that night to be rambunctious. How kind of them. But my other groups are a bit more challenging, particularly in St. Gerard's on Wednesday afternoons.

St. Gerard's is a a special-needs school in far-West Belfast, in Whiterock, which is basically straight up the hill from where I live in Andytown. When I say special needs, I generally mean ADD, ADHD, and a few kids with mild autism. We're specifically trying to use more of my personal arts-based strategies with this group, as writing and traditional learning is not their forte. It's been extremely challenging, which I suppose shouldn't come as a surprise. This past Wednesday was our second session with them. It started off pretty well; we played the Name Game that I learned at Homestead Drama with Mrs. McCain (thanks Mac!) which seemd to go over pretty well. Then we broke into smaller groups, and I was leading a group with three boys: Francie, Fra, and Ciaran. Fra is the smallest boy in the class, very sweet, lots of energy, but generally very well engaged in the activites. Ciaran is very quiet, and often has to be "coaxed" (read: forced) by the teachers to participate in activities. We were doing an exercise called the laundry process, in which the young people were looking for pictures and words in magazines that represented something in their community that made them feel angry, sad, bored, or that they wanted to change. It was difficult from the very beginnings. Curse those teachers, we asked them to bring in old magazines, and for some unknown reason, they didn't think to check if these magazines had half-naked pictures of girls in them, which, of course, they did. Now. Imagine trying to get three 13 year-old boys to focus when there's pictures of Britney Spears in a bikini floating around. Almost impossible. Honestly though, Ciaran and Fra weren't so bad. It was Francie. That kid was determined to hijack the entire process, talking over me, asking inane questions about Britney, not listening, saying stupid things to the other boys, etc. You get the picture. It was made even more frustrating by the fact that when really talking to Fra and Ciaran, I could get them to engage somewhat in the activity. Granted, they only thing they would cut out were footballers, which wasn't really the point, but it at least stimulated a conversation about sport, staying fit, and whether there were enough opportunities for them to play sports in their communities. This made it that much harder when Francie would deliberately talk one of them away from me. I tried so hard alternately to engage him, to ignore him, to ask him to stop, and even to ask one of the other coaches for help.

It's extremely discouraging when something like this happens, especially when you've no real experience coaching. It become really hard to remember why you're there, and to remember that most likely this is not about you at all. These are kids from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds who obviously already struggle in school settings. You know that they have issues. You knew ahead of time that it would rough. But it's still hard to prepare yourself for something like this. And then something happened that reminded me not only of why these kids were struggling, but also of how much they needed a opportunity like PA.

Francie had been misbehaving all day. Ciaran was quiet, but manageable. As we were cleaning up the room from our group activity, Ciaran was taken into the corridor by the teacher and absolutely screamed at. Top of the voice, angry gestures and pointing screamed. By his teacher. In front of the entire class, and us. Afterwards Francie was also yelled at quite vociferously. I know that he was being difficult all afternoon - believe me, if anyone experienced that, it was me. But the way he was yelled at really shocked me. It was just so unnecessary and over the top - almost violent. But really, Ciaran is the one I'm worried about. He's already very quiet, and you could just see the anger and frustration in his face after the teacher yelled at him. Personally I didn't witness him doing anything particularly disruptive or awful, so I don't know exactly what the teacher's reasons were. But I'm concerned. Yelling at him isn't helping. I'm afraid he's withdrawing more. Ciaran's teaching isn't helping or educating or nurturing him. She's oppressing him, as far as I can tell. And when I got him to talk about football, I couldn tell there was more there than a withdrawn, misbehaved kid who hated school. He plays on a football team. He really likes to play and training with his team, his friends. He can talk intelligently about these things, if you give him a chance. And this is really what PA is trying to get at, to get young people to feel like they have a say in what happens to them, to give them a chance to talk about what matter to them to help them work through and throw off the different forms of oppression around them (especially my project, which is literally based on the Theatre of the Oppressed).

As much as I get frustrated with young people, which anyone who knows me knows that I do, I want someone like Ciaran to have a chance to not get screamed at. I'm still not convinced that I'm the best person (or even the least bad person) to try and help him do this, but I guess I'm giving it a go.

written by  ebienelson on February 20, 2009 from Belfast, United Kingdom
from the travel blog: "She is the Belle of Belfast City..."
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That's my girl! Maybe, just maybe, you ARE the one to make a difference here. It could be. You've at least identified the problem, so the answer may yet occur to you.

written by  Katie Nelson on February 21, 2009

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