Graduate teacher: ‘I’m asked a lot why I haven’t emigrated’

When a friend advertised on his Facebook page that he was looking for people to take part in a new documentary about Ireland’s lost generation, I read the list of criteria with a sense of depressing familiarity.

It asked were you a 25-35-year-old, struggling to progress in your career, working two jobs (or more) and/or having difficulties with rent/mortgages (or simply relying on the house of Mom and Dad to keep oneself afloat).

As I ticked each criterion, I realised I am not alone in this stagnating Post-Celtic Tiger era.

I am a geography and economics teacher currently working in my eighth school in three years, all across Dublin and Kildare. Being displaced so frequently has been tough. Different schools bring different systems and approaches, and having to change from one method of teaching or pedagogical study to another at the drop of a hat is very taxing. Just as you seem to be finding your feet and confidence in a school, your time could be up.

Substitute teachers can be targets for students who like to test the waters. Familiarity and routine schedules help teachers to cater for a student’seducational needs, to maximise efficient learning.

I have been striving to maintain consistent work in a single school, so I have some hope of becoming permanent. Unfortunately, that has been easier said than done. As many teachers well know, the journey toward permanency is long and arduous. Even getting my foot in the door has not been as easy as I would have hoped after my qualification in 2014.

Due to the lack of employment opportunities in Ireland, many of the 127 from my graduating class have been forced to leave the teaching profession, or pursue their teaching careers elsewhere. I've been doing a lot of soul-searching in the past two years, asking myself, "Am I making the right decision by staying in Ireland?" or "Am I doing myself justice by staying in education?"

It is demoralising to go through application after application to get no call back, or be told that this job requires experience that I simply cannot obtain. This translates for millennials like me across all employment sectors, not just teaching. We are expected to work for little or no pay after graduating in order to hopefully be given opportunities that previous generations took for granted.

As each year has passed post qualification, permanency has kept equal distance from my grasp. Contract of Indefinite Duration (CID) is the term thrown about by teachers waiting to obtain permanency, which would finally give them the security to plan and structure their future. With employment opportunities fluctuatingprecariously, I have had to work part-time in other industries to help defray car running costs, loan repayments, and other general living expenses.

This is not a "poor me" story; I took part in the RTÉ documentary and am writing this piece to convey to others the reality of being a young person in Ireland today, and the difficulties we have trying to embark on our careers and become independent adults.

Many friends have sought a quick fix by going to work in schools in the UK, but more often than not have returned after a year. Some have come back because the workload for the salary earned is crazy, while others deem British school structures and teaching methodologies too rigid. There is a fundamental problem with British education if they are constantly contacting Irish teachers for teaching positions that British teachers are not filling themselves.

I have been asked many times why I haven’t emigrated. Perhaps it is a sense of personal pride in wanting to prosper in my home country. It’s not an easy decision for many Irish teachers, to give up their life in Ireland with loved ones and friends that they had envisaged would be in their lives after qualification.

But the prospect of fixed full-time contracts for two years or more in the Middle East may have to be the saviour for me, and many others like me, as the trickle effect of new teaching jobs announced by Government last year has yet to really be felt on the ground.

Luke McGahren features in Generation F’d, a three-part series looking at life post-crash for Ireland’s Millennials, starting on RTÉ2 on Thursday, January 19th at 10.30pm.