After a September of mayhem, when coffee break and lunch time seemed like the Mad Hatter's tea party, we rejoice in the normalcy which has once more descended on our erstwhile Tir na n-Og, the haven of tranquility which is our staffroom. For four long weeks we had been beleaguered by an invasion of student teachers from three training colleges, and their Heads of T.P. very conveniently (for them, not us) arrived for inspection just as the kettle was about to boil for one of our twice daily libations. Sometimes there were ten adults in a room of very modest dimensions, which can with difficulty seat six.
Happily September is not a time for protracted breaks as everybody is engaged in the important business of bonding with their new charges, so nobody was unduly worried about the city visitors. Nevertheless we feel that the colleges of education are doing us no favours in sending students into our schools on teaching practice at the beginning of the school year. One of our teachers was particularly incensed about this matter and intends to spend many weeks engaging in what she rather charmingly refers to as corrective surgery!
"My brother said you were a nightmare" a precocious little lady in my new Senior Infants chirpily informed me. This whimsical description presumably referred to my fairly regimented approach to class discipline, and the boy in question was rather prone to histrionic outbursts of sulks and tantrums. Being dispassionate about his remark I realise that his time with me may not have been the stuff of dreams for him, but neither was it a state of euphoria for me. Speaking of matters hallucinatory reminds me of our recent in-service day on substance abuse. The approach of our tutor was strictly pedagogic as she had an enormous amount of information and statistics to impart to us.
However, we didn't dream our way through it: we listened in a state of heightened awareness to the litany of concoctions which children as young as nine years are devising to get themselves high. It was scary. I think that we all came away willing to squeeze the Walk Tall programme into our schedules, no matter what juggling we have to do with our timetables.
Good self-esteem and the ability to say "no" to the peer group are of paramount importance to the student in today's world. Such a small word, but what a big meaning. Sadly it does not seem to feature greatly in most parents' vocabulary. So are we like Sisyphus rolling the stone uphill?
