(at No. 4 The Square pub in Tralee)
The three of us met for supper and I learned more about Irish education in that one visit than I think I ever could have in an entire course on the subject. Maybe it's because the three of us all took the MA together and know just how theoretical we can take a conversation (VERY theoretical, fyi); maybe it's because we are all educators and have a passion for teaching; regardless, I was amazed at how much could be discussed in such a short time!
As a result, I identified a couple things to consider about education when collaborating with people
from a different culture:
(the County Kerry Board of Education Building, Tralee)
Union Membership
I have only ever taught in the Carolinas, both of which are "right to work states" - which basically means that unions are illegal. Unions have a great deal of influence in many other states, and teachers are required to join them upon employment in those states, I consider it to be a cultural phenomenon that is not restricted to national boundaries. In Ireland, there are two teachers unions, the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) and the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI), and one of them has officially gone on strike, as of Monday. Saturday night, I learned that the union a teacher joins is based on the school where s/he gets hired, and, even if the teacher moves schools, they must wait for open enrollment before changing unions. My friend, Siobhan is currently in this situation, and the union she is a member of (ASTI) is the union that is striking. Eoghan is a member of TUI and they were discussing how different their situations were. The strike is twofold: 1) teachers pay in Ireland for non-permanent teachers (Siobhan is non-permanent, Eoghan is permanent) is abyssmal - Siobhan brings home right at 1200 euros per month (less than $1600) and is forced to pay into two funds that she will never be able to use because of her union agreements; additionally, she must go on the Dole (Irish welfare) during school holidays, for which she is unpaid. Eoghan did not discuss his salary, but he was clearly shocked by hers. 2) the government is restructuring the nation's Junior Certification - a preparatory exam for the Irish Leaving Certification, which determines students' higher educational institution and providing almost no direction. The problem the ASTI (and many individual educators, from what I gathered) has with this is that teachers will still be held to the same standards for contract renewals, but have no idea how to meet those standards. The lack of direction and communication, combined with the pressure of maintaining old standards is an unnecessary stressor that has motivated the ASTI to strike.
As someone who has never worked in a place that required union membership, I felt like seeing two different perspectives was pretty eye-opening! Both Eoghan and Siobhan agree wholeheartedly about the issues of teacher salary and the junior cert, but because they each belong to different unions, they must "tow the party line" of their respective memberships: Eoghan can't participate in the strike, and Siobhan must. I can honestly say, however, that even with the differences between the unions' approaches to a difficult situation, I wish that we had this kind of leveraged support in our "right to work" states, especially in the Carolinas, when we are facing such similar situations (in NC, with the DREs a few years ago, and this last round of teacher salary chaos that McRory's put us through are very similar situations where union support might have made a huge difference).
Religion in Schools
Another cultural difference I learned about during our visit was about religion in schools. In the States, we have very clear policy designed to separate Church and State, especially in schools, but, until very recently, all schools in Ireland were required to be religion-based. I know that, especially in the American South and the Bible Belt states, this is a point of contention and conservative Christians argue that there is a "war on Christianity" when teachers can't discuss the Bible, or students can't pray at school football games, but I wonder how they would react if the school their children attended enforced Catholic, or Muslim, practices. Or how the educators would feel if they had to implement such practices as school codes of conduct.
I listened to Siobhan as she described every faculty meeting at her current school: they always end with a prayer and everyone crosses themselves devoutly. As a product of the Catholic school system, Siobhan was resistant to the ritualistic practices of Catholicism herself, and, now she finds herself half-heartedly participating in the same rituals. Thankfully, being part of the EU has helped Ireland become a little less strict in its predominantly Catholic education, and in recent years, Muslim schools have been introduced into the national system.
I have also read recently (but haven't done much research on it) that there is either talk of establishing - or there are actually intentions to establish - non-religious (secular) schools, at least in the Dublin area. I will be very interested to see what this type of public education system looks like, when both religious and secular schools are publicly funded. I hope to keep an eye on these developments in Ireland in an effort to help inform myself, my friends and my colleagues of the possibilities in the American school system. As charter schools and home schools become more and more prevalent, I'm curious to see how these systems evolve to both embrace tradition and diversity.
There were so many other topics covered in our conversation, including the feeding system of Irish education; the pressure put on teachers in specific schools to make sure their students make certain scores on the Leaving Cert (600 is the highest score, and at Siobhan's school, something like 40% of their students earn a 550 or higher!); the fact that students can begin Community College in Ireland at the age of 13 (very similar to NC's early-college program) and that these students are traditionally the ones who are in feeder schools for poor secondary institutions, or who won't be able to earn a high enough score on the Leaving Cert in a traditional high school to get into the higher educational institution they want to attend; the severe distinctions between non-permanent and permanent contracts, and the potential abuse of permanent contracts; and the still overtly misogynistic method of hiring permanent employees based on women's fertility ages - did you know that female teachers in Ireland are less likely to be hired during their 30s than their 20s or 40s? I sure didn't! But that seems to be common practice, and something I've heard not only from my two teacher friends...
Regarding my own personal career objective, this visit-turned-learning-experience had limited utility value, until we got to the pub and I was able to have one-on-one conversations with both Eoghan and Siobhan about their own approaches to the classroom. It was so fascinating to see how invested they are in their students' learning! We discussed a variety of teaching strategies, assessment practices, and those Aha! moments for our students that drive us to be willing to deal with the political frustrations, if it means helping transform that one student's understanding of the world. For me, this is why I want to go into Faculty Development with a focus on Teaching Strategies: to help professors find that Aha! moment that drives them to want to help their students learn.
