Welcome
Dear readers,
Welcome to our Marist Alternative Education Centre’s Website.
What brought you here? Was it the word "Marist?" Was it "Alternative Education?" Or were you just browsing and you came across us. Whatever the reason, welcome anyway.
Yes, Marist does have to do with the Marist Brothers and Alternative Education is to do with working alongside youth of the North Shore of Auckland City for whom mainstream education is either not working or not an option.
There may be many questions arising in you about this kind of work. The most common question asked of us is, "What success do you have?"
A summary of last year’s students, 2003, showed us that the average length of time a student attended our Centre was sixteen months and the average daily attendance was 88%. For us these are success figures when we consider that a good number of the young people at our Centre have been long time school refusers.
This is but one element of success. We hope that we are trying to make a difference in their personal lives, giving them a spirit of hope and a sense of their own self worth which is sometimes harder to measure. We hope that the informal, family spirit we try to cultivate at our centre and through having a listening, compassionate ear, that these may touch into their lives and perhaps help bring about change, where necessary.
Perhaps it is good for me to stop here and allow what follows to tell its own story.
Thank you for "popping in" to our website. I hope you find it informative.
God bless
Br. Martin Pattison FMS
Director