Rory Fitzgerald
Seán came home from school the other day with a fanciful tale: “I won thousands of pounds for my school today. Thousands! My drawing was the best in England and I’m going to be in the newspaper. It’s amazing. I can invite anyone I like to come to a special party when I get the prize. You are invited, dad!”
“Oh really, Seán – that’s amazing, actually unbelievable,” I said, quite sceptically. For a six-year-old, the line between reality and their imagination can be blurred at times. Only last week he and his pals were defending the village from an attack by invisible men. This story sounded almost as unbelievable, but he seemed quite insistent. Perhaps there’s something in this, I began to think, when he came down from his bedroom at 9pm that night, saying “I can’t sleep ‘cos I’m so excited about winning all that money for my school”.
Special assembly
The next morning I was bringing the kids to school, so I resolved to find out the real story from his teacher. “Oh yes,” she said, “all the class entered a drawing competition and Seán won the category for South East England. The prize is £1,500 and there will be a special assembly in the school for the prize-giving.”
They were indeed booking in the photographer from the local paper. I looked down at my little boy, who smiled up at me, seeming about ready to burst with pride. All his class were really proud too, that one of their own, from their small village school on the Isle of Wight had won a competition against all the big schools from those big towns and cities on the mainland.
Parents and teachers alike were delighted; all and sundry were congratulating little Seán, who seemed to grow taller by the minute.
Yet Seán’s nature is such that the real joy he was taking was not in his own achievement, or good fortune, but in being able to help his school. Best of all, the money had to go towards a sustainable project.
For a boy who is happiest in nature, the prospect of his prize money being used to plant trees and build play areas in the school grounds was the icing on the cake.
Happily too, my parents will by chance be visiting from Ireland when the assembly announcing the big win takes place. We all need our moments of triumph and this is an important one for a boy who had spent much of the year catching up with his new class, in terms of reading especially. This was due to his having transferred from the Irish system, which spends a lot of time on the Irish language and other subjects, has a much shorter school day and so is at least six months behind in English reading.
He has more than caught up now, but for months he was a boy who had to keep heart, and too often seemed to wonder if he would ever be top of the class. Well, now not only is he the best hurler on the Isle of Wight, but also the best Year 1 artist in the South East of England.
Yet all his joy is at how he has been able to do something that is making the teachers and pupils at his school so happy. His kind and generous heart has amazed us since he was a very small boy, and that is the greatest prize of all.