Lisburn teacher helps create lessons in memory of sister

A teacher whose sister died from a brain injury at the age of 32 has helped create new lessons on organ donation for post-primary pupils.

Ciara Hunter, from Forthill Integrated College in Lisburn, helped set up the classes for pupils aged 11 to 16, in key stages three and four.

Ms Hunter’s sister Clare died in hospital in 2020 after an arteriovenous malformation (AVM).

“We had to sit in the room beside Clare and decide would she have wanted to donate her organs and if she did what organs would she want to give,” Ms Hunter told BBC News NI.

She praised the organ donation staff in the hospital for being very sensitive and kind, but said that talking about donating Clare’s organs “wasn’t a conversation we’d ever had as a family”.

“I, like so many people, had misconceptions around organ donation and I assumed that if you had the [organ donation] card the hospital would somehow see it and know what to do,” she said.

“It was eye-opening and I had never even told my family I had the organ donation card.

“If I had just said, ‘Yes, I want to donate my organs’, it maybe could have prompted that conversation with my family.”

The lesson plans that Ms Hunter and other teachers have drawn up to teach children are available online and include information about the impact of organ donation on recipients.

They include the story of Dáithí Mac Gabhann, a young boy whose need for a heart transplant prompted a change in the law in Northern Ireland.

As a result, adults in Northern Ireland are deemed to have given consent as a potential organ donor after their death unless they choose to opt-out or are in an excluded group.

The lessons also have information on organs in the body and what is involved in being an organ and tissue donor.

Produced by the Public Health Agency and Organ Donation Northern Ireland, they are also available in Irish.

Ms Hunter said the lessons for pupils were “all about information, not about persuasion”.

“It’s not like you’re trying to convince people that they have to donate their organs,” she said.

“I think the earlier that you can break that stigma and break that taboo that this is not something we talk about, the better.”

Ms Hunter said that, as a teacher, she was “passionate about giving young people the skills and the information to navigate their life”.

“While we all hope and pray they’re never in the situation I was in, or God forbid their families are in that situation, by even just teaching these resources a student can go home and say, ‘we learned about this today’,” she said.

“It just opens those doors to have those conversations.

“And the students have the knowledge, and the information and the understanding to be able to actually make those decisions themselves.”

Ms Hunter said that the lessons had been designed to be taught in an assembly and in a single class lesson.

“The nice thing about these resources is they’re really straightforward and flexible,” she said.

She said they could be taught in Science, in Religious Education (RE) or Learning for Life and Work (LLW).

“In fact, as an English teacher, we could cover it in English and then create a task from that, allowing our students to write a speech or their own article about organ donation and whether they would or wouldn’t and giving the reasons why.

“It’s been created by teachers for teachers.

“We’ve made it as flexible as possible so that schools can fit it in.”

The Public Health Agency’s (PHA) organ donation promotion manager Catherine McKeown said they were delighted to make the lessons available.

“Providing young people with the information they need to find out more about organ donation and to consider their decision around it is extremely important,” she said.

She hopes the lessons will empower young people to make informed choices while being able to talk confidently about organ donation.

“The resources have been developed by teachers, for teachers, and will educate young people, in an age-appropriate manner, about the importance of donation and transplantation for individuals and society,” she added.