After 24 years in the Army Michael Kelly decided to train as a primary teacher. It was a family calling and Kelly had some inkling of what might be involved. Nonetheless, he found the classroom a changed place from his memory of school when he was a child, or even when his own children went to school.

"You need a particular kind of personality to hack it in the classroom," says Kelly. "The training you get is good, but it won't make a teacher out of a non-teacher."

Fresh out of college at the age of 45, Kelly worked as a substitute teacher and found that he was offered a range of permanent positions. He held out for the job best suited to him, and finally settled at St Lawrence's Boys' National School in Stillorgan, Co Dublin five years ago.

Fortunately for Kelly, he has found that he can handle the pressures of modern teaching, but the 21st-century classroom came as a surprise at first.

"Kids today are very full on," he says. "They don't sit there and wait to be educated. They have to be engaged. As a teacher you're competing with television and iPods and PlayStations. Kids are very stimulated and it's the teacher's job to try and make relatively unstimulating activities interesting for them. When I was in school children were more subdued - now they are wired up. A different technique is required."

Despite acknowledging that times have changed, and welcoming progress in the system such as the abolition of corporal punishment, Kelly still values some of the tenets of the pre-1971 approach to primary teaching.

"There is a time for children to sit and listen. They need to be de-stimulated at times in the day - calmed down and helped to realise that not everything in life is hilariously entertaining. No matter what you do you can't make Irish grammar into a rollercoaster ride. You're doing children a favour by teaching them that some things in life require some application before they get interesting."

Kelly believes that his experience of raising a family and serving overseas with the Irish forces has helped him to deal with some of the more difficult problems that arise in the classroom. "The cocktail of problems that children bring to school with them requires maturity to deal with. There is a place for mature people in this profession."