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Assessment, Testing, Transfer Test Northern Ireland, Brian Baird, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Education, Great Teachers, Brian Baird, Mr. Jones, Northern Ireland, Rites of passage, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, Teaching, Themes of Childhood
The kids matter ~ right?
Today is Transfer Test result day in Northern Ireland, and thousands of 11-year old children will know by now if they got the scores they need to “get in” to the next level of their education. It is a process of “academic selection” that seems to fly in the face of ensuring access, equity, and excellence for all children – all children – yet…
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Act Two, Blog Awards Ireland 2015, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Great Concert Venues, Great teachers, Memoir, Nick Hornby, Northern Ireland, Phoenix, pop culture, Record Shops, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Van Morrison
on the list . . .
I love a list. It has a beginning and an ending. It’s a certainty. A sure thing. Naturally, then, I love Rob Gordon, a kindred spirit erstwhile hapless record shop owner in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. A compulsive maker of lists, his “top fives” run the gamut of pop culture, eclectic compilations that include his top five episodes of Cheers, top five Elvis Costello songs, and…
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Language of Cancer, Leontia Flynn, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Rituals, Seamus Heaney, Themes of childhood
the lovely uselessness of poetry
For World Poetry Day 2015. The freedom and the lovely uselessness of poetry is its whole point. ~ Leontia Flynn My parents were raised in rural County Derry, Heaney country, where they learned to be thrifty and resourceful, and also – when all else failed – to believe in the mystical powers of “folk healers,” those individuals uniquely gifted with…
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Act Two, Castledawson, Family, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mother's Day, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Poetry, Rites of passage, Rituals, Seamus Heaney
my mother’s day dance
In Ireland, it is Mother’s Day. In Arizona, it is just another Sunday that finds me thinking about my mother – ma – in Castledawson, County Derry, a great armful of sheets rescued from the clothes-line before the rain begins to fall. Then, the folding, a precise ritual, and my father her partner in a dance handed down from one generation to the next.…
