Jan Kersel

Primary school teacher, Ardchattan, Oban

I am originally from Wales, but have been living in Scotland for 28 years and on the West coast for 17 years. I work in a small rural primary school – Ardchattan – near Oban in Argyll. The school at present has 12 pupils ranging from P1 – P7. I work part-time in school and part-time producing resources for GLPS. I teach across the board and have responsibilities for spelling and grammar, practical maths, Gaelic, music (recorder), ICT, Eco schools and gardening club.

About seven years ago, we became aware that although our P7’s were introduced to French, they were not exposed to Gaelic in school. This prevented them from making an informed choice about which language to take on entering the next stage of their education in Oban High School. Neither myself nor the headteacher had any experience of Gaelic, so it was suggested that I start the fairly new GLPS training which was being offered in Argyll and Bute at that time. It involved a day per week for 20 weeks over the school year, meeting in Oban with other trainees and Mary MacKinnon the GLPS tutor. It was quite a daunting task learning Gaelic to teach it! The course was very enjoyable – challenging, stimulating and hard work, but was presented in such away as to make the learning attainable and fun. The part that I really enjoyed was taking my new found knowledge and skills back to the classroom. The children seemed to be inspired by Gaelic and I was most interested to observe the progress made by everyone regardless of gender or ability. The children were very keen to show off their language skills and try out anything offered. We are in the lucky situation that we are able to offer Gaelic throughout the school from P1 – P7. This fact caused me a bit of a problem. If we were offering Gaelic at an early age it was quite feasible that by the time the children reached P7 their Gaelic would be reasonably good so in order to keep abreast with their development and progress and to be in a position to keep challenging them, I enrolled on An Cursa Inntrigidh at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, which took me eighteen months to complete.

Gaelic is now embedded in our school curriculum, our children now have a solid grasp of the basics of Gaelic and we have had several successes with our achievements. We were prizewinners with a Gaelic drama in our local Mod and with a collage in the national Mod. Several of our children attend the annual Feis in Oban and Coisir Sgire Earraghaidheal.