Posted by She mentions an incident where one of her pupils announced in class that there had been a shooting in the area over the weekend, and it was annoying because it happened at dinnertime when people were trying to get their Chinese takeaways.
“She did not see a problem with being shot, it was how inconsiderate they were that she couldn’t get her Chinese. That was normal to her.”
“They’re different childhoods and what is normal to them is not normal to other children, which is sad sometimes.”
For all the ways that children can be separated in education in the North, a school in the unionist stronghold in East Belfast subverts traditional expectations.
Seaview Integrated Primary School in Co Antrim begins the day with a prayer.
It is an ordinary way to start the day in many schools.
However, this prayer and this school are a bit out of the ordinary.
The prayer was invented when Seaview Primary became the first and only Catholic school in the North to transform into an integrated school.
Less than 8% of children in Northern Ireland are in integrated schools, which intentionally aim to mix pupils from Catholic, Protestant and other backgrounds.
The school system is sometimes labelled as segregated and divisive, with questions raised about how appropriate it is in a society emerging from sectarian conflict.
The Department of Education in Northern Ireland says surveys show two-thirds of people in the North are open to integrated education and a new law means the department has a legal duty to support the sector.
So why has growth been relatively slow?
The religious separation of schools dates to the partition of Ireland in 1921.
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