Debbie’s labour of love

TWENTY years ago, Fr Paul Duignan, the then parish priest of Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Church on Saddle Road, Maraval, decided that the Maraval community needed an Early Childhood  Education Centre.  He had noticed that parents were leaving their children aged 0 to five years with caregivers who were unable to stimulate them with activities for their development at this most important stage of their lives. Cynthia Ellis who had completed the three-year Servol teaching course, which is certified  by Oxford University, England, accepted the priest’s offer to start the Our Lady of Lourdes Nursery School and Day Care Centre in the Church Hall. On April 15, 1985, the late Archbishop Anthony Pantin blessed and officially opened the school.

On her retirement in 1993, Ellis passed the director’s post to her assistant Debra Streete, who had by this time acquired the Oxford Certificate from Servol.  Last Tuesday Father Kevin de Loughry officiated at a Thanksgiving Service in celebration of the nursery school’s 20th anniversary.  The school now accommodates only 20 children as the space has been scaled down by the parish and is far from adequate for the previously planned intake of 36 children. However, says Auntie Debbie, “our children who are taught according to the ‘SPICES’ (Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Creative, Emotional and Social) school curriculum move on to top primary schools and many of them pass the SEA and go to seven-year secondary schools.”

The school deals with all basic subjects, math, language science, social studies as says Auntie Debbie, “we try to have them adequately equipped to enter primary school. You have to build the child and we work with the whole child.  Behavioural patterns, everything, we groom the child to live outside there which is very important now. A lot of schools are not thinking about the whole child, just academics, so the children go out with knowledge which makes it difficult for them to fit into society.” Fees are nominal so this self-maintained school cannot really hire too many teachers. Says Auntie Debbie, currently the lone teacher: “Everything we have to do we do it ourselves with help only from the parents. We are a private school so there is no government assistance. 

We need things like a television, videos, educational games, a printer and video machine to show educational material, and would love to have puzzles and books because once children are playing with things you have to refurbish so you could never have enough of books and puzzles.   The thing we have been begging for for years is the television and we really need one now.” Auntie Debbie and her children are not fussy and would willingly accept a second-hand television set which can be delivered directly to the school. Auntie Debbie is happy when she sees her children excelling: “They do not ever forget you as children do not ever forget the good things in their lives and that makes you feel rich. Leaning on parents for certain things makes me feel I am overdoing it but the children need it so I have to beg.

But then we look at the number of good things which we do annually like visiting mas camps, our own Carnival Jump Up, an annual Nativity play for the community — we open our gates and they come religiously.  We attend the annual Maraval Schools’ Sports Day. While our children get a well-rounded pre-school education. Our school has a lot of history.” The youngsters, not only have their own playground apparatus, but  go on at least two to three field trips per term. Registration for the new school year starts in May from age two years.  School are 8 am to 2 pm. The youngsters  wear crisp gingham check uniforms. On June 24 at 10.30 a.m, nine children will take part in a graduation ceremony as they prepare to leave the nursery school which taught them the benefit of “Aiming for a better Future” and the motto to “Play and Learn.”