“Love is not only kindness in the eye” Euan Girvan talks about the Glasgow Girls and more…

Summary: <br> Tilly the cat<br> <br> <br> A few episodes ago we spoke to Amal Azzudin, one of the Glasgow girls. She recommended speaking to ”the legend “ Mr Girvan featured in the Glasgow Girls story. A teacher in Drumchapel High at the time a large number of refugee and asylum seekers and their children arrived in Glasgow.<br> He talks about the challenges the teachers and school faced at the time, the unexpected consequences on the communities of Scotstoun and Drumchapel and the continuing challenges faced in communities across the UK.<br> -0-<br> Transcript<br> K: I’m here with Mr Girvan<br> E: Or Euan.<br> K: It’s so nice to meet you at last. I have read a lot about you. Heard a lot about you. Seen actors “be” you. Documentary footage from 2015 times. As a part of the Glasgow Girls story and more, you were a bilingual support teacher.<br> Oh and I should say what’s the name of the cat?<br> E: Tilly. Tilly the cat.<br> K: If you hear jingle bells in the background Tilly the cat is with us. I love it when we have got lots of different things in our podcasts.<br> Euan, you were a bilingual support teacher at Drumchapel High. How many schools have you worked at?<br> E: Too many in the West of Scotland. I started off in Cranhill, North Kelvinside, Knightswood, St Thomas Aquinas and Drumchapel of course and finished up at Notre Dame School for Girls, up the road there.<br> So I experienced a lot of Glasgow schools and I’ve always lived close to the schools because I’ve always thought that’s important. I’ve always felt you need to be part of the area.<br> A lot of teachers don’t feel that. They feel as though they need to be away and they need their lives to be private. I can understand that. But I’ve always felt that you had to be within the area that you were working in. I think it helped. Unlike Tilly who probably now does want to get out. (sound of jingle bells).<br> K: She does want to get out. Shall we pause?<br> E: Pause<br> K: So Tilly’s been let out the door.<br> In your time as at Drumchapel High, you were obviously a significant part of the Glasgow Girls story.<br> E: As were a number of my colleagues. It just so happened that in the presentation of the plays and so on, it whittled down to me being the teacher who was involved. But there were plenty of other very committed teachers who provided support in what was a very difficult initial situation. When the school received a number of refugees from totally different backgrounds, totally different areas and totally different levels of poverty, education, having experienced different types of trauma.<br> Especially war trauma.<br> And the idea was that because Drumchapel’s numbers were going down, then the children would be bussed there from Scotstoun. So instead of those children going to St. Thomas Aquinas in Knightswood, they were bussed to Drumchapel. That created a whole number of other issues. Because as you know Glasgow at that time, less so now, had gang areas over which you would not go.<br> And these refugee kids traversed that. <br> And so that was one of the very positive outcomes of bussing kids to a school that was a number of miles away from where they stayed. It did cause a number of issues for us as teachers then because we argued that these children should be going, especially the primary children coming up, should be going to schools in the local area.<br> So we actually argued ourselves out of a job in Drumchapel. Because eventually what happened was, children either went to Knightswood or to Scotstoun from primary school. So those were refugee children who were with their peers and had grown up with their peers in primary school. And off they went.<br> So that was a good and an interesting outcome. Not one that I was personally happy about, because then I got trundled off to other schools which I didn’t mind so much,