The Secret Teacher: ‘Meet Ireland’s biggest dosser’

I can’t abide dossers. Expertly shaving just a couple of minutes off the start of every class amounts to a lot of saved time and energy over the course of a week.

Forgetting something and having to nip out to get it brings a welcome breather half-way through a class, and when there’s an important appointment right at the end of the day an early exit means beating the end-of-school rush and the consequent traffic.

Meet Mary, Ireland's Biggest Dosser. She "teaches" next door to me and could single-handedly write the Dossing for Dummies manual.

She and her children take the mother-child bond to a whole new level, so finely tuned is her children’s instinct for precisely when Mammy needs saving from work.

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Their teething problems and nasty bugs always coincide with Mary writing the in-house exams, so she will take a step back “if people don’t mind”.

Astonishingly, her children’s parent-teacher meetings just happen to clash with staff meetings. I could go on but there isn’t any point.

Nor is there any point in raising the subject with Mary, as everyone knows she has her union on speed dial, and won’t be long finding a fundamental maternal or human right that has been violated.

More fool any union official who entertains such calls and colludes in helping the Marys to evade their basic pedagogical duties.

In recent years our nation has demonstrated an admirable capacity to air its dirty laundry in public and courageously engage in frank discussions about it, the church abuse scandal being an obvious example.

But I suspect the strategically-managed dossing will remain buried, despite its prevalence.

A well-paid secure job sets one up for life. While the teaching profession is now in crisis, with interest dwindling, prospects poor and morale low, it was for many years both a highly respected and eagerly sought job.

The holy grail for any young adult is securing a good job with long-term prospects. In our profession this is known as a CID, contract of indefinite duration (ie a job for life).

The dossers have contributed hugely to how perceptions of teachers have changed over the years.

Not so long gone are the days when the priest, the guard and the teacher were the holy trinity of a community, especially in rural Ireland. All three have fallen dramatically from grace in different ways in recent years.

‘Untouchable’

Collusion contributes massively to the silent scandal that is the dosser teachers. Job security creates an “untouchable” aura around an individual. Power, when wielded just the right way, prevents others from wanting to “take you on”.

And fear very often prevents parents from complaining when they absolutely have grounds for doing so – fear that their child will bear the brunt of the fallout, fear that nothing will change anyway, fear that making a complaint will lead to far more stress and bother than just finding a way around the problem and riding it out while it lasts.

And that’s where those who give grinds are on a real winner. Last week, in schools the length and breadth of the country, classroom teachers took the credit for marks to which a grinds teacher had contributed far more significantly. Saying nothing always amounts to collusion, even if it is, unfortunately, often the most sensible course of action.

The holy grail for any young adult is securing a good job with long-term prospects. In our profession this is known as a CID, contract of indefinite duration (ie a job for life).

Extracurricular activities

While striving to attain CID, teachers engage in all sorts of extracurricular activities, and many cannot do enough to please school authorities. This is a critical stage in a teacher’s formative experience, as the buzz and the joy of working with the students outside the classroom can inspire them to be involved in such activities for life.

Others are simply playing the game, and will abandon all the extras with more enthusiasm than they had ever shown for them in the first place the minute their CID comes through. Plenty of them drop the essentials as well as the extras, but not necessarily like hot coals nor indeed all at once.

Obviously we are not all like that, but this piece isn’t about the effective and admirable teachers.

In my experience the dossers and those who are at the top of their game rarely mix. They would make for strange bedfellows anyway, having so little in common. Teachers are generally courteous and professional to each other despite huge variations in how they perceive their role and conduct themselves.

Frustration

Those who share my frustration at the dossers giving everyone a bad name, and the parents or students who have suffered at the hands of a dosser, are probably thinking how easy it is for me to write anonymously.

Some are undoubtedly willing me on to be the whistleblower that this scandal urgently needs.

Well, that’s not going to happen. That’s not how it works. Fear and collusion ensure that I won’t – not for now anyway.

But like much of our other dirty laundry, maybe one day this too will be aired for all to see and talk about.

The “Secret Teacher” is a practising secondary school teacher. The teacher’s identity is known to the education editor.