Last night I ended up thinking a lot about how this week has been. I need to move forward and stop wasting this opportunity; I messed up, it happens, it's life but if I do not move forward and just try and learn from it I am going to be stuck and miss out on so many wonderful other learning opportunities. It doesn't mean I might not mess up again but hopefully it won't be in the same way. I have come so far and talked a lot about wanting to be present in this experience that I really need to be respectful to that and the short amount of time I am here. So today I am hoping to move forward and come back to pushing myself to really show up.
I went to the centre in the morning and met up with Martina and the boys from the Detached Project. Today is the day we are getting to go on a tour of Cloverhill Remand Prison.
http://www.irishprisons.ie/index.php/joomlaorg/west-dublin-prison-campus/cloverhill-prison
The tour was pretty incredible. I mean its an intense experience to really see how prisoners live. It's fine for us to say send them to jail, lets the courts deal with that stuff but I have always struggled with the lack of treatment services and rehabilitation opportunities in any peni system. But it's nice to be able to know more and really see than just from the TV, news, and movies. I do know the whole time I was having a very large desire to have had some sort of experience in Canada to compare it to so was almost feeling under informed about my own country in a lot ways during the tour. Governor Fergus Woods gave us the tour, and was great with giving information and answering any questions we had. It was kind of funny 'cause right as we were starting the tour and made our way into the main area that leads to the different wings in the prison there was a painting on the wall. The painting was of Lake Louise, which being a very kind of iconic scene for Alberta was kind of funny to see in a prison in Ireland.
After I returned from the prison visit I met with Lisa who is the FAS coordinator in the centre and interviewed her about the program and how it worked along side the centre.
I then finished that up in time to make my call with Catherine. This was the half way point of my trip so it was time for my midway evaluation with her and Eileen. I think the conversation went well. I spoke a lot about my challenges from these weeks and how I really wanted to more forward. I think I had learned about myself in the process and how I was going to use it in the future to influence my practice. Eileen and Catherine both really seemed to appreciate that I had kind of gone though the process of making a mistake, that I had caught it on my own, and then become aware of how it was affecting my practice and my confidence and been willing to name it so openly. I think this is something I try to be good at, self relegulating and evaluating but it can be hard not to beat myself up over things sometimes. We all seemed excited for the progress I have already started to make in building relationships with the young people and picking up on some of the skills needed to work so independently in a work environment of this kind.
The day went by so fast and before I knew it, it was already time for drop in to start. The drops in went fairly well for the most part. I enjoy getting a chance to see some of the youth from my groups and interact with them in a bit of a different way. I also like having the opportunity to interact with some more main stream youth in the community and get to ask them questions about Dublin and things going on for them as youth in Finglas. I feel like it is giving me more opportunity to get a well balanced picture of Finglas and what the community looks like. I also got to check in with some of the youth about the Debs.. they stated it went well and all were pretty safe for the most part. It turns out it was their party bus that I saw downtown the other night.
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