A moving moment as best of the old transfers to the new

Teaching Matters: We are moving school. Thanks to the Department of Education and Science, Muckross Park College will henceforth be housed in a magnificent new building.

Given that it is the only non fee-paying secondary school for girls in the area, and that half the school has survived for decades in prefabs where the students and staff perspired or froze, depending on the season, a new school was overdue and well-deserved. The fact that it will be nestled among trees in Dublin 4, a mere heartbeat away from the old school, is due to the kindness of the Dominican Sisters, who donated with an open heart a site any developer would slaver over. The final touch will be a new Astroturf hockey pitch, thanks to the generosity of parents and past pupils.

We should be overjoyed, and we are. Yet there is also an anxiety about moving into a building so new that you can still smell the paint and sawdust, from a building, which, although old and worn, was a proud witness to 106 years of history. Just over a century ago, women were allowed to sit university examinations, but not to attend lectures. The Dominican Sisters, with their usual progressive and enlightened attitude, sought to redress that injustice by holding lectures for young women in Muckross Park. At the same time, a junior and senior school were set up. Even the youngest first-year pupil is conscious that it is no small thing to attend a school with such a history of valuing women and their education. It is an awesome responsibility to carry on that tradition in a new era.

The convent and the old school were organically joined. Indeed, a Sister merely had to open one of the doors at the end of the long school corridors to be home. A school starved of space gratefully accepted the offer of the convent parlours to meet parents, and even more gratefully the use of the chapel for occasions both sad and joyous.

Although the last teaching Sister retired some years ago, this move is still a wrench. At their best, the Dominican Sisters created an atmosphere of learning which was both wise and liberal, founded on adherence to truth, but tolerant always of human weakness. Not that they are all saints, although there are saints among them. The Dominicans are strong, feisty women, with a long tradition of encouraging independent thinking. St Dominic instituted democracy in his order from the start, a startling innovation in the 13th century. As an observer of the Dominicans, I was often reminded of the Rev John Dunlop's comment on his fellow Presbyterians and their method of decision-making. "Democracy gone mad," was his wry, if affectionate, appraisal. Yet generations of students profited from an atmosphere where people were encouraged to question and to debate, to think of others in the wider world and not just of themselves.

Of course, the atmosphere at Muckross is not just due to the Dominicans, but in major part to the lay staff, including many who have given decades of service of an exceptional quality. We have been fortunate, too, in our pupils. We held a marvellous evening recently to which past staff, sisters and representatives of past pupils were invited, where Mass was celebrated, and people gathered afterwards in the concert hall to chat and reminisce.

Naturally, amid the laughter, thoughts turned to those who have died, including past students, some of whom died tragically young, and to Dominican sisters who shaped the school. Yet no one will object if three lay members of staff who died while teaching in Muckross are singled out - Fionnuala O'Driscoll, Anne Maguire and Geraldine Brennan. They were very much a presence in the hearts of people who gathered.

Despite the frantic packing of everything from test-tubes to lockers, every member of staff and every student is aware that the most important aspects of the school that we wish to carry with us are intangible. No building, no matter how well-equipped, is anything except a shell unless it is given life by the people who work and study there. Every human institution has its own ethos, in the sense of a dominant pervading spirit that finds expression in the habits of the heart of those who are part of it. That spirit cannot be wrapped and labelled for the movers, but of everything that we will bring with us, it is by far the most precious.

A formal opening is scheduled for September, however, there will also be an informal celebration of the transfer from one building to another. We plan to begin our move with a symbolic passing on of light, from the hands of a Dominican sister to the hands of Patricia Fitzsimons, the principal, and on to the school body.

We want to bring the Christian values infused by the Dominicans with us on our journey - a welcoming, inclusive spirit that values every individual. As the entire school community wends its way from the old building to the new, no doubt in a noisy, good-humoured way, we plan to give thanks for all that has been, and to anticipate with joy, all that will be. By the time this is printed, we hope that move will have been completed. We hope that the chaos and dust of preceding weeks will have settled somewhat, and we will have begun to call the new building home.

Breda O'Brien is a teacher at Dominican College, Muckross Park, Dublin