Author: Madison Leighr | Major: Special Education | Semester: Spring 2024

A day trip to the beautiful Cliffs of Moher on the coast of Ireland!

My name is Madison Leighr and I am in the COHEP College studying special education. I studied abroad for one month in Limerick, Ireland the spring semester of my senior year of my undergraduate degree. Prior to this trip, the entirety of my senior year was spent each semester at two different placements interning full-time. During these placements I was in different special needs settings and classrooms. With only one month of my college career remaining, I was eager to expand my knowledge beyond what teaching looked like specifically in northwest Arkansas. I had a strong desire in me to travel and discover how school personnel were advocating for students with special needs and providing services for them all across the world!

While abroad in Ireland, I got to do just that! I was able to get hands-on field experience in a primary school called, Scoil Íde that serves students 4 years of age up to the 6th grade. The administration at Scoil Íde allowed me to work with students of all grade levels and observe different teaching styles and models of special education. Some of the main things I noticed right away that were different than the school system back in Arkansas was the uniforms the students wore, the Gaelic language they had instruction over everyday, and the physical layout of the school.

Specifically special education itself looked a lot different. Students classified as having more significant needs went to specialized schooling separate from the mainstream school they were zoned to. Therefore the students I was working with most days were students where english was their second language or they were falling behind in one subject and needed mild interventions and small group instruction. It was eye-opening learning from the administration and teacher’s viewpoints on special education as in Ireland there is no teaching liscence or degree that specifically qualifies and equips teachers to instruct students with special needs. Yet despite this seeming as a setback, the special needs assitants, teachers, and administration care deeply for the well-being and education of each student that comes into their school.

Assistant principal, Tom Hartney and the interns from the University of Arkansas for the month outside of the primary school, Soil Íde, in Limerick Ireland.

Each day to get to school, we cycled along the river from the University of Limerick housing to Scoil Íde. We quickly recognized people we started to pass on the trail each morning regularly. On our last day of teaching before heading back home to the states, one of the regular people on the trail that morning stopped and asked us where our bikes were. We told him it was time for us to go back home to the states so we turned our bikes in the evening before. He asked us about our time while in Ireland and left us with this statement, “Well, don’t be strangers. We would love to have you back.”

This statement itself encompassed precisely what the atmosphere was like here in Ireland. The country welcomed us with open arms to make mistakes, to learn, to grow, to discover, and to explore. While I went on this trip with the mindset that I was going to be teaching students, I quickly realized they were simultaneously teaching me. They taught me what it looks like to love someone despite their cultural differences. They reminded me of my capability to make a lasting impact in just one month. They taught me how to be a kid again and play hide and seek in the forest and still learn while doing so. To teach and to be taught! That’s what this trip meant to me.