Forty years ago, six children who had never gone to school before 
met for the first time in a new classroom converted from a former Public Works Department storage room in McNamara. As the new school, which would later become known as the Eslyn Henley Richiez Learning Centre, received more students, it was eventually relocated to a government-owned house in John’s Hole where seven teachers currently instruct 20 students. The facilities for the territory’s first and only school for students with special needs have come a long way and so has the public’s attitude toward these students, Vansittart Huggins, EHRLC’s acting principal said Monday in an interview about the school’s 40th anniversary.
Back in the early ‘70s, doctors in the territory began to notice that there were a few children who, because of physical or mental disabilities, weren’t going to school, Ms. Huggins said.
“They believed the children should be kept in an environment where they can learn, rather than being kept in a hospital or at home shut away from the public,” she said.
Today, the EHRLC students, who have mental, developmental or physical conditions that require more time and attention than a teacher in a mainstream classroom typically has to give, do just that. They learn in small groups and play games in the schoolyard with their peers.
Ms. Huggins has been researching the history of the school, which was founded in 1972 as the Fort Charlotte Children’s Centre by the British Red Cross in the territory and then-governor Derek George Cudmore’s wife, she said.
See the Oct. 11, 2012 edition for full coverage.
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