Hard issues faced by the union

Suicide and conflict in the classroom - two issues of increasing concern to teachers - will be examined at a series of seminars organised by the TUI over the next two months.

They form part of at timetable of seminars which has been drawn up the union's working party on professional development in response to members' needs. The seminars will resume in the new year, examining a range of issues including the prevention of stress in teaching, teaching in all-Irish schools, the effects of education legislation on teaching, pre-retirement training and teaching special-needs students.

The first element in the year-long training programme will concentrate on bullying in the workplace. It takes place later this week in Dublin. Speakers include Dr Mona O'Moore from the Anti-Bullying Centre at TCD, researcher Jacinta Kitt and Jack Nash of SIPTU.

"What we did was to survey the membership at congress at Easter and ask for the issues of most pressing concern," says John MacGabhann, vice-president of the TUI and chair of the union's professional development working party. "We were quite particular that we would not duplicate the normal service provided by the Department of Education."

The schedule is "complementary to the classroom teacher or the lecturer, complementary to their professional efforts on a daily basis", he says.

The seminar on suicide takes place in Cork on October 21st. "You would never wish to have to deal with suicide, but it's an issue, sporadic and unforeseen in its nature," MacGabhann says. "You hear anecdotal evidence and then every so often you meet this problem face to face.

"Our concern is to alert people to the problem, to allow them to ensure that their role is humane and sophisticated if suicide occurs and alert people to what might be warning signs, so that they can help. It's a school and college response - what we are hoping to do is to optimise the response within schools and colleges where members are."

The union also plans to run a seminar for principals on conflict resolution in the classroom. This will take place in Dublin on November 24th. Two further seminars on classroom conflict resolution will run in Carrick-on-Shannon on November 10th and in Waterford on December 8th.

MacGabhann says that societal changes are "giving rise to changes in behaviour from students in the classroom". The seminars planned will help to point to a sophisticated, strategic response to that, he says, "not some knee-jerk response, but something that helps students as well as the teacher and that allows resolution".

Principals, he says, "have more constituents to address. What we are doing is explicitly recognising that the role in the management of schools is slightly different and that needs to be addressed."

Principals, he adds, "have, more than others, a far greater level of interaction with parents.

"Notwithstanding the somewhat miserable expenses provided to teachers, who get £12 for an overnight and 12p per mile for travel," he says, other seminars, held last year, were oversubscribed. "We are having to turn people down," he says. There is "a clear need for more" courses like this, he says.

The TUI's working party, chaired by MacGabhann, comprises Joe Carolan, president of the TUI, and Billy Fitzpatrick, education officer with the TUI; and also Sean MacCarthy, Damien Marshall, Jim Connolly, Pat Conway and Alice Prendergast.