Competing needs

I'm not entering any more competitions. Ever! I'm finished with deadlines, forms, envelopes stuffed with sheets, drawings, diskettes and even, on one occasion recently, a sod of turf. I'm not going to encourage my class to write 500 words or less on the topic of a day in the life of a potato, a piece of poetry about headlice or a 3D model of a crannog.

I will not cut, glue, mould or stay behind after school waiting in vain for a Swedish school to email us the last instalment of a joint essay on the Information Age, while my babysitter threatens resignation if I don't appear in the next five minutes.

We're never again going to build up our hopes on being the creme de la creme of schools which have delved into local culture and recorded, video-taped and photographed every nook and cranny of our parish on the trail of a trip for the whole class to Norway or Connemara or Silicone Valley or some other far-flung corner of the world.

And, then, there's the double-edged sword of victory. Win once and it's a fantastic buzz for the class - elation, congratulations, dangerously high levels of self-esteem. This throws them into a manic fervour for entering everything that An Post brings our way, and believe me that's saying something!

But, the high gives way to the low, when we don't figure when the olive wreaths are being distributed the next time around, when our model of a Viking longship is shipped back to us with the figurehead dangling off and nothing in the line of commendation to soothe our fragile egos.

So, a hair of the dog is the only hope and we design a callcard with great creative gusto on the hunt of more laurels.

We manage to paint every nook and cranny of the classroom, their uniforms, the carpet and my own prized suede boots as we produce new masters that summon up every possible image of Ireland from leprechauns to Guinness to Riverdance.

The artistic flow of these artists was welling not from true artistic devotion but rather from the lure of a very tempting prize from those generous people in Telecom Eireann. I almost uttered the unutterable when one of my budding Picassos produced the entry form with the closing date in clearly printed across the bottom. "Teacher, that was last Tuesday."

So, today, when our local shopping centre informs us that they will be soon delivering giant styrofoam templates for collage work on the topic of Easter to be displayed in the centre, I don't allow myself to be seduced by the prize of £1,000 worth of a school tour. I'm joining TASC - Teachers Addicted to School Competitions.