INTERVIEW Tereasa McGuire, múinteoir with a mission

MATTER OF PRINCIPAL Tereasa McGuire pictured in Drummin National School.?Pic: Michael McLaughlin

Múinteoir with a mission


Áine Ryan

IT is Shrove Tuesday today and if you happen to be passing Drummin National School there is bound to be extra pancakes on offer. Even when Principal Tereasa McGuire was very small, she would line up all her dolls and teach them. Nothing has really changed since, except the dolls have transformed into the young children whom she teaches a range of subjects – including cookery – in the the two-teacher national school that nestles behind holy mountain, Croagh Patrick.
The school was founded in 1849. For 13 years now, the teaching principal has been at the educational helm of the tightly-knit rural community of Drummin, which lies ten miles outside Westport. That is half her professional career.
“I love the fact that when children start school they are blank canvasses. I love how inquisitive and open they are. I love that they are so grounded in themselves and they still think through their hearts. We need the heart-head balance to face the world. It is a shame that many adults lose their connection with the heart. Long before Barack Obama and Enda Kenny made popular the phrase ‘Yes we can’ schoolchildren had this open optimism,” says Tereasa McGuire.
Tereasa is a passionate gaelgóir and a Fine Gael Town Councillor. Of course, this did not stop her leading a delegation to Junior Minister Michael Ring’s constituency office yesterday (Monday) regarding the Save Our Schools campaign.
Twenty-six years ago, Tereasa McGuire started her first teaching position as a teacher in a special class in a large school in Athlone. She taught there for two years before returning to St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, to pursue a post-graduate qualification in Special Education. She subsequently taught in Ahascragh, Co Galway, but when a position became available in her native county she hotfooted it home, even though there was a daily commute to the little school in Tonragee, Achill.
“I will always remember my first day in Tonragee … The long-time principal Mary McNamara said ‘I may be principal but we work as a team here’. I just loved the school and the fact that it was a scoil lΡn-ghaelach,” Tereasa recalls.
During this period, she worked also as a Home-School Co-Ordinator in five schools in Achill. Tereasa observes: “The more you get to know the parents and engage with them the more you understand where the children are coming from.”
It was the mid-’90s and when a vacancy became available nearer home in Drummin, she applied.
“The numbers have remained pretty static since I became a working principal – 18 to 24 pupils – but the amount of administrative work has steadily increased. I still have to teach my four classes – third, fourth, fifth and sixth at the moment – as well as overseeing the day-to-day running of the school.
“Of course, I have a great colleague, Paul De Lacey who has really developed the digital dimensions at the school. There are also our wonderful caretaker and secretary, learning support teacher and a proactive and supportive board of management and parents association,” she explains.

Save Our Schools
“IN two years time if we don’t have 20 children enrolled here in Drummin we will go down to one teacher. It is not acceptable to have one teacher for all the classes and all the subjects. It is not acceptable for health and safety reasons either. Just because we are in rural Mayo and not in Dublin 4 does not mean we cannot have the same resources,” she argues.
She continues: “We are really hopeful that the demographic of the area will have changed by 2014 so we can retain our second teacher. I have already spoken to Taoiseach Enda Kenny about our plight and hope he will intervene with Minister Ruairí Quinn to save our school, as well as small rural schools all over the country.
“The school is an integral and intrinsic part of the community. We have already lost our post office. Children have got a very good education in country schools. And children who have a learning need can be facilitated better in small schools.”
Tereasa McGuire is a strong proponent of the experiential Steiner approach to education. She observes: “Why study sketches of leaves in a book when you can go outside and examine and touch the real thing.”
Passionate and vocational, she exudes a spontaneous sense of warmth and caring. These attributes are fundamental to her approach as a teacher. So too as are the lyrical wishes of poet Patrick Kavanagh which she quotes for The Mayo News: “ I tell you little children, not to hurry across the years… I tell you, little children, not to squander sunny hours.”

A Save Our Small Schools march will be held on Saturday, February 25. The march will convene at 12.30pm, The Mall, Castlebar, and walk to Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s office at Tucker Street to deliver a petition.