Sylvie's retirement fundraiser

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it already but just in case…. I am retiring this year.

I am reaching the end of a 36-year career teaching in 10 different schools (listing everything there including teaching practice placements) but mostly Douglas, with the longest part at St. Ninian’s High School.

Inevitably, at this stage, I spend a lot of time reminiscing… I can remember the people who set me up on the way to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude: teachers, lecturers, relatives, friends, colleagues… those who continued to support me, including pupils themselves, and the team I have been privileged to lead since 2004… As in any workplace, we saw each other through the good and bad times, had laughs at work, on training courses -before that took place on Zoom!; on school trips (all 26 of them in my case!!). We learnt from each other, I thrived on colleagues and students’ success… Too many names to mention, but nevertheless I would like to single out my friend and colleague Hugo Tams, who has not got to live the retirement years he deserved. For those of you who did not get to work with Hugo, he was quite simply the ideal colleague. You knew he was in as you approached the staffroom or a class and you could overhear roaring laughter, he could easily have had a career in comedy, he had the Irish gift of being able to tell a story well; he had a sense of the absurd and knew a paper pusher from an educator; his (cultural, linguistic, musical, political, historical, ICT-related, footballistic…) knowledge was incredibly broad but he never displayed any arrogance; if you sought out sensible advice, he was there; with tremendous social acuity, he knew how to diffuse a situation… He had the ability to only see and seek the good in people.

When he was diagnosed with early onset of Alzheimer, we were all in disbelief, yet true to himself, he dealt with it without any form of self-pity and even with humour. This humour still shines through when we visit him at Castle View in Peel.

I am therefore raising money for research into this cruel disease (yes, any disease is cruel but one without a cure definitely deserves that epithet). So little is known about the brain that progress has been necessarily slow. For people diagnosed with dementia there is no way to reverse the damage that has been sustained or to halt the progress of the disease. Let’s do everything we can to change that. Treatment plans focus on trying to slow down progression of the disease, coming to terms with the diagnosis and putting personalised plans for care in place.

There is a real need to find a cure for this life-changing and life-limiting condition.

I will set myself a number of challenges:

-The harbour-to-harbour walk in May ✅ 07/05/23 Thank you so much to friends who walked with me!!

-Walking the 12.7 km to/from work also in May/ June/ July ✅

-A stretch of the Parish walk (Peel by 17:20 ✅)

My attempt at a translation of a novel by an Italian friend is about to be published and for every copy sold in the UK, £3.00 will go towards this charity. (Thank you to the 33 buyers so far on 13th July 2023 ✅)

And then I will think of something else!

Thank you in advance for any donation you are able to make.