What do you call this country? What do you call this town?

              This morning, we teachers were tasked with meeting in the canteen with students whose instructors were out today. One of them was Protestant; the other four Catholic—which broadly represents the proportion in Derry/Londonderry. The boy were all pals. They’d tease each other, as they did me by asking what do you call this city, what do you call this country. But they said it didn’t matter to them much, the way it fiercely continued to do for their grandparents.

              Yet, when I probed further, they made clear there were neighborhoods they couldn’t without getting beat up. Well, this is what I want to know about, I said to them: What does it mean that you can call each other pals but can’t necessarily walk together into the same neighborhoods?

              The answer isn’t top of the mind. I’ve been asking many students why they’re here, in a religiously integrated school. Students rarely present this as a philosophical or political choice. Some had siblings here, or find it close to home; also, there’s no entrance test. One left St. Mary’s because it was too judge-y. Too judge-y? "It’s an all girls’ school,” a boy said, as if that explained it.

              Later, we heard more: Young People Leading Change brought us onto the open floor of the theater, where we first played mix-and-mingle games with the juniors (the young ones), and later engaged in the serious conversations with the older students, serving in many ways the same purpose. In these dialogues, which included discussions of identity, drug use, racism, and the police (a good segue for me to tell students that our visit to the police tomorrow couldn’t possibly happen tomorrow because of the shooting of an officer while he was coaching children in Omagh), the Oakgrove students and the Roosevelt students were separated to decide what they wanted to tell the other group about where you live. The older students described continued self-policing in communities by paramilitaries knee-capping drug dealers and “pedos,” and also continued separations and tension of religion.

              In the evening, we walked to the cultural center and crashed an Irish folk dancing class, outnumbering them with our students and the three Oakgrove kids who tagged along. They patiently taught us a couple steps and let us join for twenty minutes before we walked home, full of fiddle.

              Before that, some of the sixth form had joined us before dinner at a men’s homeless shelter, where some remained up to fifteen years, well past the statutory two allowed in public shelters. James, the man running the place, left us with these thoughts: If you put kindness out into the world, even if you don’t always get it back—if you’re open, and honest, you may not be able to help everyone or be thanked for what you do, but you can have a life you believe in.