The Professionals is a series of articles in which three people from one field share their views of Ireland today. Keep an eye out for other articles, including the psychologists and the tech workers.
The panel
John Toner is a physics and computer science teacher at Presentation College Headford in Co Galway, with a PhD in astrophysics.
Michelle McBride is a freelance writer and primary schoolteacher who has spent the majority of her career working in Deis schools.
Declan Tuite is assistant professor in the School of Communications at Dublin City University, with a PhD in digital anthropology.
What do you find most rewarding and most challenging about the work you do?
John Toner: The rewarding side of it is just working with young people. There’s a lot of life in young people and you can draw a lot from that.
A lot of the reward comes from extracurricular activities, or when you’re working with them on a team. Like this evening, I’m going to a science table quiz with senior students.
The rewards are in generating a love of the subject. It’s something that you have a passion for. It really, really does click somewhere deep down.
This would probably be a surprise to most people outside the world of education, but the workload is very high. There is still this nine-to-four, clock-in, clock-out idea of what teaching and education are. But the hours go way beyond that. A lot of my holidays, days off, time not physically in the classroom, are actually filled with work: catching up on marking, setting exams, making resources.
The workload has become higher in recent years. I do see a lot of teacher burnout and people leaving the profession. That has led to what is the big challenge nationally, which is teacher retention and recruitment. A lot of people are put off teaching because of these kinds of conditions. You could pay people double but they would still leave.
Teenagers are in this formative part of their life, which is fantastic. The other side of that is that it’s also a very difficult part of their life. You often end up dealing with those challenges.
Michelle McBride: I am a mainstream class teacher at the moment. I teach third class, but I have taught a variety of different class levels and special classes, and I’ve also been a special-education teacher.
The rewards of my job are in the social and emotional parts, and in particular with the child who maybe is a little bit shyer or quieter in your class. The day they find their voice, when they raise their hand or you see them interacting with the group in a more confident way, that’s the real reward for teachers.
It’s definitely a privilege. Kids get to hear something for the first time, especially in primary school. You might be teaching them some new aspect of science or geography, or even an aspect of maths, and it’s new to them, so you get to almost bear witness to their initial response to something completely new.
The ‘that should be taught in schools’ mantra is my biggest bugbear as a teacher. It seems to be the quickest go-to response when something happens
— Michelle McBride
The workload is increasing year on year, with us trying to match all the new initiatives that are passed down from the department.
One of the bigger challenges, especially when you’re working in a Deis 1 school (a primary school that receives the highest level of support under the Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools, or Deis, programme), is trying to marry up what is put out there by the department as being “we’ve got an inclusive education system, we’re catering for all needs, we’re very diverse” with the reality that Deis schools are not being staffed properly. We all know what they need. They need to have speech and language therapists on site in order to bridge the gap that is there.
I started in one school and then I moved to Cork, to another mainstream school that wasn’t Deis, and that was the first time I saw something different, because Deis 1 was all I knew. When I moved to the other school, I saw what it actually is like when that education gap is closed. When they have support and security, when they’re going home to a hot meal, when they have somewhere to study.
Declan Tuite: My personal pleasure is when people get better at the thing than you are, or they create work and you go, “I wouldn’t have created something that good at 21″.
People think you rock up and it’s two hours of chatting with no prep; there’s a string at the back of your neck that you can just pull and stuff comes out. They forget about all the pastoral elements: the kids coming in crying, coming out to you.
Then there’s how many different things you have to do and how many times you have to code-switch. So you’re talking to first years, then you have a PhD student, then you’re on some admin budgeting meeting. All the time there are emails popping in from people who expect you to answer at the speed of a text or a WhatsApp. You’re trying to remain like the swan, noble, with the legs flapping underneath the water all the time.
How has your profession changed in recent years, and what forces have driven those changes?
John: I only started teaching in 2016 and even in that time I’ve seen a lot of changes, like the new Junior Cycle coming in. There’s Senior Cycle reform. Outside of those curricular things, more has changed on two different fronts.
One is the non-curricular changes that have come in with regard to initiatives that have come into the school and things that we’re supposed to be on top of. Red tape and planning. These things are there for a reason, but the hours have stayed the same as if you were teaching 25 years ago.
Then the world that students occupy now is very, very different. I actually think in some ways it’s a smaller world. You’re exposing students to things for the first time that you would expect teenagers to have seen before, but in a lot of ways teenagers live in a little bubble of things that they’re interested in.
Michelle: I have to acknowledge the impact that digital technology has had on education. Obviously, the kids are learning a lot more through technology ... but when it comes to actual digital technology, we still need to teach them how to use it. I think it’s important that we don’t just assume that they know that.
One big thing that has changed my profession is the introduction of the free books scheme in primary school. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an overall collective exhale from teachers around the country, knowing that they no longer had to be that go-between, that debt collector, handing letters to children to go home looking for money for books. It was such an awful thing. The same with the school lunches. It’s a great thing to no longer look at children sitting in front of you who might be hungry.
Declan: We always had online elements. We were always doing things with video chats. But I’ve noticed in the last few years the inversion of the model. It used to be: the class, the lab, then backup online, maybe some kind of Zoom thing or video chat. Now the stuff online is often where students head first. They have a hierarchy built now that if they’ve logged in and checked out the stuff online, they feel like they’ve done something.
It’s less personal now, not only because of the technology, but also because of housing. When I started, 70 per cent of students lived on or around campus, in digs, flats, whatever. Now it’s 30 per cent. That means they’re not hanging around on campus. They’re not joining clubs and societies the way they were.
What opportunities and risks do you see ahead for your field over the next decade in Ireland?
John: In modern foreign languages, chemistry, physics, maths and Irish to a certain extent, it’s incredibly difficult to get teachers. We’re putting a body in a room, and you’re constantly looking at the Leaving Cert and how high-stakes that is for students, and you’ve no teacher to teach them.
The last thing I see as a risk is that schools are often used as the potential solution to everything. If there’s some report from the OECD that shows obesity is increasing, the solution seems to be: diet should be taught better in schools; schools should teach how to cook. Then another report from businesses shows tech skills aren’t where they need to be: this needs to be taught in schools.
It just seems that a lot of issues come back to schools, but this isn’t matched with resourcing.
Michelle: The “that should be taught in schools” mantra is my biggest bugbear as a teacher. It seems to be the quickest go-to response when something happens. It’s frustrating. I’d really like to see a greater collective civic responsibility for issues, as opposed to just thinking they can be solved in a primary school classroom.
The classrooms I’m teaching in now are definitely more diverse. There are so many different nationalities and cultures and languages represented. I think there’s a really great opportunity there for us to learn from how children interact with difference.
They see difference as totally normal and interesting.
[ Is teaching still an attractive profession?Opens in new window ]
In terms of risks, I’m always thinking about special education and the children who have trouble accessing the curriculum. In all aspects of education, we talk about early intervention. We know it’s key and we know it’s a big part of the solution, but there are so many gaps in the provision that thwart our ability to deliver and give those children the education they need.
Something I’d like to dispel a bit is the notion that teaching is a vocation
— Michelle McBride
Declan: My hope is that the very utilitarian way of looking at uni will change.
At the moment it’s often: “Uni is to get me somewhere, to tick a few boxes, I need a grade here, a qualification, a piece of paper”. I’m sure you’re well aware of how cheap text is to produce and how abundant it is, so the focus will change. But you can’t AI it up in the room. For me, that’s the big opportunity. That it’ll be less about ticking boxes and more about people really getting into things, because that’s where the value will be.
What do people most often misunderstand about your work or your industry?
John: I worked in the tech industry. It was high-paced and high-pressure ... If anything, at times this job is way more high-pressure.
A lot of times you bring the job home. You’re dealing very, I don’t want to misuse this word, but very intimately with students. You get to know their personality; you get to know how they deal with things. They do come to you with certain issues, or you infer things from the way they act or the way they tell you something. That can sit with you.
Michelle: You’d need to have a heart of stone not to bring some of it home and have it milling around in your mind for a while. It does eat into your own day and your own wellbeing sometimes too.
Something I’d like to dispel a bit is the notion that teaching is a vocation. When somebody says, “Oh, I don’t know how you do your job, that’s a vocation”, I feel in some ways it’s a way of minimising the professional nature of what we do. If we start looking at teaching from the professional side a bit more, then maybe we won’t begrudge investing in education as much as we do.
Declan: First of all, I don’t have summers off. I’m full of PhDs and master’s students all summer, as well as having to write things and get them out there. I think that’s one of the misconceptions – the time thing. I’m writing my own curriculum; I have to make up material all the time. And people will say, “You’re a lecturer”, but they don’t think “lecturer–researcher”. There’s a balance there.
Another misconception would be students taking a long time – nine months, sometimes into second year – to realise we actually want them to do well. We’re not taskmasters and gatekeepers. We’re trying to get them somewhere, to develop themselves.
When you think about the future – for yourself, your career and for Ireland – are you optimistic? Why or why not?
John: I think the future of Ireland from an education perspective is bright. We live in a country where, as much as I’ve said people have misconceptions, people really value education. More so than in some other countries. You can see it around the time the Leaving Cert is on or when the results come out. It’s a big discussion; everybody talks about it.
Michelle: I’m going to pick up the female flag here and say I’m optimistic about what I’m seeing in girls in the classroom in front of me.
In the past couple of years there’s been a definite growth in confidence in how they talk about themselves and their future. They’re talking about wanting to be engineers and doctors, and these are jobs that would rarely have come up, say, 15 years ago when I’d ask girls what they wanted to be. There’s a definite shift in the confidence levels of girls.
They’re recognising that they have as much right to be at the table as the boys in their class, and they’re taking part in discussions with more confidence than they used to.
What I’d be optimistic about is that this generation will really start closing that gender gap a bit more.
Declan: I’ve been around long enough to see that the kids themselves are, generally, good people who want to do things.
My negative note, though, is that I find them quite conformist nowadays. The rebels aren’t there. They’re not pushing, they’re not trying to break things in a positive way, to disrupt, to try out new things.
That they sit back and don’t actually go for it. I’d love more arguments with students instead of, “When do you want that? Can I have an extension? Is that okay?”.
I just find my biggest worry now is that they get a bit comfortable, they don’t push it enough for themselves, and as a result they, and sectors of industry and the country, get a bit bland and fall behind. I find them cautious.
