For a teacher who writes, the day job must come first

For most of his life, Jack Harte, Principal of Lucan Community College, Co Dublin, has been writing. "I started writing when I was at school and getting peotry published when I was 15," he recalls. In adulthood he has had two collections of short stories and a novella published.Murphy in the Underworld was published by Glendale Press in 1986, Homage appeared under the Dedalus imprint in 1992 and Birds and Other Tails - also from Dedalus - came out in 1996. His work is known abroad and has been published and anthologised in Britain, United States, Australia, New Zealand and Finland.For Harte, though, the day job comes first. "writing is important to me and therefore I put it at the bottom of my agenda. My work at school comes first and I get down to writing only when I've cleared everything on my list," he explains. As a result "there are long spaces when I don't write at all."Born in Killeenduff near Easkey, Co Sligo, Harte moved as a youngster to Lanesboro, Co Longford, where his father worked with Bord na Mona . After school, he took a civil service job and worked for a degree by night at UCD, before becoming a teacher. "I've always enjoyed teaching," he says. "A young teacher asked me recently whether it had always been my ambition to be a principal. I told him 'no'. I came into teaching to change the world."What Harte enjoyed most about teaching was the interaction with young people and the fact that you were shaping young minds. His move to become a principal was a natural progression, he says. "It's important to provide the proper atmosphere to enable young minds to grow and develop. It was an attractive challenge and I was delighted to accept it."Teaching is a stressful job, the Lucan principal says. "I've done a lot of things including labouring and lab and office work and I've found nothing as stressful as teaching where you are constantly giving of yourself."Criticism should be focussed on the quality of teaching rather than on the length of the school day and year, he argues. "When you're in front of a class there's no relaxation, you have to be in top gear the whole time." It can be difficult , though, to combine the life of an educator with that of a writer."Teaching is probably the worst job to have if you're a writer. You have to expend so much of yourself in class, you're drained by the time you get home."Harte has just completed a play on southern perspectives on Northern Ireland and is now working on a novel. "It sounds very organised but I manage only very short bursts of writing," he admits. "I don't enjoy the physical act of writing - I find it burdensome.

What I enjoy is the shaping of ideas and the satisfaction of seeing the end product. I have to push myself." His great love is the short story, which is his disappointment is declining in popularity.

"There's no longer any status in the short story and publishers say they're difficult to sell." Such reaction does help to dampen your enthusiasm for the genre, he confides.Some 10 years ago, Harte founded the Irish Writers' Union and the Irish Writers' Centre in Parnell Square, Dublin. "I'm constantly annoyed by the way writing is dismissed as a possible career prospect," he says. "Society is prepared to benefit from the fruits of writing, Joyce and Yeats lived in relative penury for most of their lives yet they have earned millions of pounds for the Irish economy."The writers Union is going strong, he says "We felt there were concrete ways in which the situation could be rectified and we've started tackling problems."