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Reaching out to homeless youth can challenge even the most dedicated person, and as Beverley Hadgraft discovered, helping them complete school takes a special kind of teacher.

Although Hollywood is fond of stories about teachers who turn troubled teens into angelic achievers, real life is not so simple. A little over 10 years ago, Father Chris Riley (pictured page 186) decided to set up a school for homeless kids. As founder and chief executive officer of Youth off the Streets, he‘d been providing crisis care through his organisation and helping young people turn their lives around since 1991. He knew all about the problems of homelessness, drug dependency, exclusion from school, neglect and abuse young people can experience, but he also believed education provided the way out of a troubled life. So in 1997, Key College, in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills, Sydney, opened its doors.

Min Bonwick, Key College teacher and coordinator Min’s story will make you believe we are all exactly where we should be and all things happen for a reason. In 1996 Min Bonwick spotted a little job advertisement in a Sydney newspaper that read: ‘Teacher wanted to start school for homeless kids.’

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Having spent some time working in special education, it was exactly the sort of thing Min had always wanted to do. She was appointed to the position, along with another teacher, Peter. The pair then proceeded to prepare their new classroom. As they cleared the shelves to

make way for textbooks, Min found a book and read the title in disbelief: Mignon and Peter: Stories for Happiness. “Mignon is my real name – is that spooky or what?” she exclaims. She kept the book, and on days when she feels a bit burned-out and battered, she gets it out. “It makes me feel I’m meant to be here,” she says.

The early days of Min’s Key College experience were “a bit like Monty Python”, she says. Being the first of its kind, it was difficult to know how to get kids through the door. Although Min sent information to crisis refuges, for a while it was “teachers: two; kids: zilch”, she recalls. “At one point I told Father Chris, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work.’” Father Chris doesn’t

deal in doubt; he prefers the “what shall we try next?” approach. He counteracted her misgivings, telling her: “You said you’d make it work,” and eventually, Min did.

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