JEAN RETIRES
ST Brigids NS Principal Jean McFadden bid a fond farewell to the school last week as students and teachers gathered to wish her well in her retirement.
The popular principal joined the junior school as a teacher back in 1980 and told the Drogheda Independent she has enjoyed every minute of her 36 year career at the school.
Students gave her a special sendoff with a surprise concert in her honour last week. She was presented with a number of presents on the day, including a giant tennis ball to symbolise her love of the game and a special scrapbook with pictures, drawings and momentos from all the students.
For her last teaching day staff and students decorated the office and gathered to wish her well and this was followed by a special meal for the staff in the school afterwards. ‘IT certainly was an emotional day yesterday, it’s always hard to leave something you’ve spent your life doing,’ Jean told the Drogheda Independent. ‘I’ve had such a great time in this school.’
Jean will be handing over the reigns to new principal Lorraine White at the new of the summer who herself is a past pupil of the school. ‘I know the school is going to be in good hands, I think she’ll do a fantastic job.’
Jean trained St Patricks College in Drumcondra and worked for a number of years in Scoil Iosagáin in Kilbarack before making the move to Drogheda. ‘I was getting married and I moved to Drogheda because my husband, Ronan who is also a teacher and former principal of Laytown NS, was living here. ‘It was a big change obviously from living in Dublin but I have to say I settled immediately in Drogheda. The children and the parents and the school, it was all so welcoming, I immediately felt at home.’
Jean took up the position of principal at the school six years ago.
I’ve loved being principal and I’ve had a great six years here,’ said Jean. ‘It adds such a different dimension to the job. Suddenly, after it being just you in your classroom, it’s the whole school you’re responsible for. You are working with so many different people, the other teachers, the board of management, the parents association, you see the full workings and the business of the school.’
The retiring principal said that after almost four decades with the school she has lots of great memories to bring with her. ‘It has been such a huge part of my life for so long,’ said Jean. ‘It’s been very emotional this week because it’s always difficult to say goodbye but there is a right time to do it and now is the time to start a new chapter in my life.’
She said amongst the highlights of her time at St Brigid’s was the 60th birthday celebrations this year, the visit of Mary McAleese and her husband back in 2006 for the school’s golded jubilee and the visit from members of the Irish Army this year for the 1916 commemorations.
‘ This is a junior school so the kids are all quite young but they learned the national anthem especially for that visit and my God did they belt it out,’ said Jean. The school also has a strong family tradition with generations of the same family starting their first day at school in St Brigids. ‘ There’s a great tradition of mothers sending their daughters and now their granddaugters. We have lots of pictures up in the school and you’d reguarly hear the children saying ‘oh there’s my Mammy’ so there’s a lovely continuity and bond there. There is a great camraderie within the school,’ said Jean. She said thanks to it’s proximity to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital where people travel from all over the world to work, the school has also had a long history of multiculturalism, something while has always been embraced.
‘We’ve always been based in the community but we’ve been a very outward looking school,’ she said. ‘We were also one of the first school’s in the country to have some of the Vietnamese boat children in attendance. One of those children was Mai Dinh and her children are now also students in the school. Mai has a lovely saying which she says to her kids: ‘I tell them I had to corss the world to come to St Brigids but they only have to cross the town’. I think that’s a lovely sentiment.’
So what are her plans for retirement? Well after years of organising both her homelife and schoolife with military precision, Jean is looking forward to not having to make plans for a while. She and husband Ronan are heading to Canada for a well deserved break and with both her daughters, Derbhla and Caireann, and granddaughter Rose (2) living in London there’ll be plenty of visits to the UK on the cards.