Veteran educator Eunice Jones has come full circle in her career.

After starting out at Southampton Glebe as a teenage teacher 30 years ago Mrs.

Jones is returning next month as the school's new principal.

And as Mrs. Jones told The Royal Gazette yesterday, her appointment could not have come at a better time.

The Education Ministry has chosen Southampton Glebe as the primary school in the west end to be fully accessible for wheelchair-bound students.

Mrs. Jones -- who will take over as of September 1 the position held by Esmee Trott who has been transferred to Victor Scott Primary School -- has worked with children of varying abilities virtually throughout her career.

She began teaching in 1965 as a student teacher at Boaz Island Primary School.

From there she taught at Southampton Glebe for a year.

"The experience at Southampton Glebe was very good. I worked with five year olds up to 11 year olds,'' Mrs. Jones said. "That provided the multi-faceted approach.'' Mrs. Jones also met her husband Burton while at Southampton Glebe. He taught at the defunct Western Remedial which was located at the old Cedar Grove school next to Southampton Glebe.

In 1967, Mrs. Jones entered Maria Grey College of Education in Twickenham which is just outside of London, England. After three years, she returned home with a certificate in education.

"My first post upon being a certified teacher was at West Pembroke,'' she fondly recalled. "I was classroom teacher of what is now Primary Five from 1970 to 1973. That was my first teaching experience outside of Somerset.'' In 1976, Mrs. Jones and her husband left for the US to further their studies.

She received a Bachelor's Degree in elementary education and her Masters in special education.

Mrs. Jones, who attributes her love for children to her late mother who took in foster children long before the such a system was set up, said: "I believe that all children can learn. When you work with a child who has some challenges or limitations you see that they too can learn if given the right circumstances.'' Recalling that she had to complete a six-month practicum or internship in a special education environment before receiving her Masters, she said: "It was a pre-school model programme. The criteria for children to be in the programme was parental involvement. And I believe this is where we need to start when we're talking about inclusion.'' Mrs. Jones further explained that the model programme was financed through a US government grant and had everything the children of mixed abilities needed including a good student-teacher ratio.

"We saw very good breakthroughs,'' she noted. "Children who could not dress themselves learned to do so and the so-called regular children were able to get them (children identified with special needs) to do things that we as staff could not. The students were modelling the other students.'' Parents expressed the same concerns voiced in Bermuda about mainstreaming, she added.

"Parents were worried about what will happen to their `normal' children,'' she said. "But we found all the test scores, of children who did and did not have disabilities, were raised.

"This is something that we can certainly aim for and we are working toward here in Bermuda.'' Mrs. Jones, who worked under principal Geraldine Lambert at Orange Valley School when it was known as the Day Training Centre and located at St.

Brendan's, became acting principal in the late seventies when Mrs. Lambert was on study leave.

In 1980, she left the classroom and joined the Department of Social Services as coordinator for the aged and handicapped.

During the ten years she spent in that post, Mrs. Jones served on various committees and worked with education officials on the Child Protection Act and the Education Act. She was also the coordinator for the 1981 Year of the Disabled campaign.

But Mrs. Jones explained that she felt a need to return to her first love, teaching.

And in 1990 when someone mysteriously placed an advertisement for the post of Woodlands School principal on her desk, she took it as a sign and applied.

"I knew they were going to phase the school (for special students) out,'' she said. "It was a leap of faith. But I wanted to be back in education.'' After preparing Woodlands students between 1990 and 1995 for their move into regular schools, Mrs. Jones entered the Education Ministry's mentor programme.

She took ten new teachers from West Pembroke, Dellwood, and Elliott primary schools and Berkeley Institute and Warwick Secondary under her wings and worked with them in and outside of the classroom.

Now Mrs. Jones said she is ready to guide Southampton Glebe into the next century.