I am Romy Schmit and I am currently working at ENAD, a governmental school for young adults who

• were not successful in the regular school system,

• were not able to finish school for various reasons,
• would like to gain new competencies and skills in order to obtain an additional diploma.

I started working as an English teacher in September 1989 after having been awarded a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in English by the University of Leicester, Great Britain. Ever since I have reconciled different roles such as breadwinner with a full-time job, development aid worker in Senegal, part-time student doing a Master of Education degree at the University of Nottingham, Great Britain, single parent of a daughter, who is on the autistic spectrum, and homemaker.

I know from firsthand experience what it is like to be the parent of a child with special needs, who is being bullied viciously and who does not get any effective support by the school and the teachers. I will always be grateful to people in charge of the Heinrich Heine Gymnasium, Kaiserslautern, Germany for admitting my daughter. They created an environment where my daughter felt safe and happy, and where she was stimulated intellectually in a way that would not have been possible in Luxembourg.

I love travelling and mixing with people from all over the world as I enjoy finding out about different cultures. I am also interested in music, visual arts, architecture and history. Last but not least, I take a lot of pleasure in cooking.

Finally, there are a number of attitudes and dispositions I find totally inadmissible, namely any form of bigotry and snobbishness, misogyny and homophobia.