A photo of Garnock Academy before it was demolished. There is now a new school located between Glengarnock and Beith.
I usually read skim through Facebook posts when I am half sleeping. My brain is only half active. It was fairly early in the morning and my dear wife was still sleeping. I was engaged in this lethargic read of what my Facebook friends were posting. I came across a post by someone called Paulo Algeo who is one of my Facebook friends. If you are not involved in Facebook, you might find the next few sentences hard to understand. I have 0ver 1,000 Facebook friends. That does not mean much. I hardly know many of them. At one time I was building up my list of Friends to help me to spread the Dayshare Blogs.
Here is how Paulo Algeo began his post. It was dramatic.
"On this day in 2003 I was released from HMP Kilmarnock. I was 21 and I had a load of 'good intentions.' My second child had been born 3 months prior and I knew things needed to be done differently. "
And so I started reading his story - how his life had been changed. It was a powerful story. I am going to share this in full on the 28th of August. For today I want to explain something to the readers of Dayshare. I had been curious when I saw that Suzanne Holden had married someone by the name of Paulo Algeo because I knew a Paul Algeo from my 18 years in Garnock Academy in Kilbirnie in North Ayrshire. I dismissed any possible connection because I saw a picture of a young man who had got his life together. I remember Paul Algeo got into trouble at school. He was involved in drugs etc and part of the gang culture at the school. It is unlikely that this is the same person - anyhow this man comes from South Ayrshire - not North Ayrshire. I was fooled by the name Paulo.
As I read Paul's story, I got a shock. In his story he made this remark, "I did some basic qualification while inside. Nothing of any sort standard, but I had left school with absolutely nothing. Actually I was told to leave!
He then went on to say, "I knew it was time to leave North Ayrshire." That's when I was certain that this was the real Paul Algeo and I immediately sent him a private message to confirm this. Since then I have had regular discussions with him by Facebook messenger and he has kindly given his permission for me to share his story on Dayshare.
I am going to be honest and I hope the readers will understand. I was very uncomfortable when I read this lovely story of God's grace. I felt that I had been part of the problem. I had probably never witnessed to Paul when he was one of my year group in S4 at Garnock Academy. I was what was known then as an Assistant Head Teacher. I had responsibility for several aspects of the school including a year group - and I was the man in charge of Paul's year. I had over 230 young people in that year group. Garnock was a tough school. It's catchment area comprised the small towns of Dalry, Kilbirnie and Beith in the Garnock Valley and there was considerable rivalry among these towns. This spilled over into the school and there were fairly regular fights when I was out patrolling the playground and the area around the school. Weapons were sometimes used. In addition, the school faced a problem because of its proximity to Paisley - and I am not being nasty to Paisley. There were drugs gangs operating in Paisley which is only ten miles from the school and it was a regular occurrence for cars to arrive near the school and drugs to be sold to one or two couriers in the school who then sold them around the school.
What worried me was when Paul said that he left school with absolutely nothing. That hit me hard. I was likely the person who excluded him from school. I have no way of checking this out but I had the job of excluding pupils from my year group when they were involved in serious trouble. I always had a conscience about this. I hated filling in these forms and telling young people to stay off school - even for a short time. Paul speaks as if he was told to leave school. I did not have the authority to do that and neither did the head teacher. Later on in my career, I was acting on behalf of the Director of Education and was making that very decision for the whole of North Ayrshire. I met every young person who had been given an 'authority exclusion' and the Director had delegated me the authority to reverse that decision or to remove a young person from school and to provide an alternative educational provision.
But back to my time in Garnock. I was constantly under pressure to exclude young people - like Paul Algeo from school. Some teachers expected me to do that without question or hesitation. They disliked the fact that I listened to what the young person had to say as well as the angry teacher. That made me unpopular with some of my colleagues. "He is too soft," they said. He needs to toughen up - and get rid of these troublemakers. All these memories came flooding back into my mind when I read Paul Algeo's post. My headteacher also put pressure on me - he wanted me to exclude anyone who was involved in drugs to send a message to the rest of the year group and the school. I tried to explain that we were only making matters considerably worse. Some parents made the point very forcibly that excluding a young person from school was what they wanted and was giving them an opportunity to get into more trouble. I sometimes found it hard to believe that they could get into more trouble than they were already in at school.
I shared my unease with my new found brother in Christ. I felt a bit like Philemon with Onesimus. Paul was very gracious. He did not blame me for ruining his life chances. He told me not to feel ashamed. He is now involved in work with primary and secondary schools as part of his work in the Church of Scotland. He rightly spoke of the fact that 'schools are no longer just education settings. They are social work, counselling and mental health services.' He recognised that my role at Garnock involved 'a hard act to try to balance.' He said that it was correct for him to be excluded. "Once I was off and running I was never going to engage. The truth is that I didn't have the capacity to engage.'
He summed up his character.
"I wasn't a bad kid. I was a mixed up kid. Yes, I was engaged in things that weren't pleasant, and even dangerous at points, but I didn't set out to do any harm. Although it did happen at points."
He spoke about a teacher who managed to engage with him and if anyone reading this blog knows Rosemary Graham, please offer my heartfelt congratulations to her. She was a lovely gracious lady.
Paul has reflected on his past and he quoted me a verse which sums it up:
"Foolishness brings joy to one without sense, but a man with understanding walks a straight path." [Proverbs 15:21 HCSB] Here is how Paul applies that verse:
"My lack of understanding about what was going on inside me as a result of an attack I experienced caused me to act like a 'fool' (all the childish and anti-social and eventually criminal behaviour) in order to forget and try to have some control over my life. Thankfully, God has given me understanding and he has made my path straight."
Paul added that school wasn't the place for him and that an entrepreneurial workshop making items to sell would have been more suitable for him.
In 1999, I left Garnock Academy and became the Integration Manager at Auchenharvie New Community School in Stevenston where I was able to experiment with what Paul was speaking about - alternative curriculum which was more meaningful for many young people. I am convinced that many young people are seriously disadvantaged by having to follow a curriculum which seems totally irrelevant to them.
In the next blog, I will share Pau's story of his coming to faith and the change it has made in his life.
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