‘Myjobasateacher hascompletely changed’– Kathleen
TALKS TO GLENCAR NATIVE, KATHLEEN MCGILLYCUDDY, A HEAD TEACHER IN A UK SCHOOL, ABOUT HOW SHE AND HER COLLEAGUES HAVE HAD TO BECOME MORE THAN JUST TEACHERS DURING THIS GLOBAL CRISIS
FOR Glencar native Kathleen McGillycuddy, working now as a Head Teacher in a school in the South West of England, this current global crisis has shown her just how important the role of a teacher – not just as an educator – is in the lives of the children in her school.
Kathleen attended Glencar NS when she was younger before her family moved to the UK in the early ‘80s, but as the saying goes, you can take the girl out of Kerry but not Kerry out of the girl; and while she has stayed and settled in the UK, she still makes regular trips home to Glencar, where her parents – Pat and Margaret McGillycuddy – are living.
On a personal level, while she admits that she is one of the lucky ones during this crisis in the fact that she has still been able to keep working and can put food on the table, the hardest part of the lock-down for her has not being able to get home to see her parents or for her kids to see their grandparents.
On a professional level, she admits that it is a situation she never thought she’d find herself in.
Kathleen was speaking to us her from her spare room – which since the start of this crisis has become her home office – at her home in north Somerset. It is a home office that has already seen many long days and long nights as she has co-ordinated with the rest of the staff from Broadoak Academy in Weston-super-Mare in north Somerset to make sure that her students are looked after during this pandemic.
“Our school serves a coastal community with a significant amount of disadvantaged. We have seen first hand two things really: one) how fantastic people are in coming together in times of crisis, and two) just how pivotal schools are at the centre of the community,” she said.
“When the closures were first announced back in March, the first thing that we had to do was
Once we got the food sorted, our next job was making sure that the children were safe. A lot of our kids are in lockdown in homes that are less than ideal so that was a whole new mountain to climb.
not worry about whether they knew Trigonometry or not or whether they were able to get their essays on Shakespeare finished. No, the very first thing that we had to do was to ensure food security for the families of the students.
“It is not a situation that we ever envisaged having to do when we rocked up to work that day,” she said.
Kathleen said that the crisis has opened her eyes to the reality of how precarious the lives are of some of the children in her school as she learnt that some of them really do not know where the next meal will be coming from.
With her school as part of a larger family of schools, the next steps over the first few weeks of the crisis involved the school sending out what they called ‘family boxes’.
“We put together, along with other organisations who helped us so brilliantly and generously, about 3,000 family boxes and we sent these out to our families in need. It had food in it, it had recipes that could be created based on the food in the boxes. It had crafts and activities for young kids, and people volunteered to deliver these boxes in the community – safely of course. It was such a mammoth effort to ensure that kids had the basics such as food,” she said.
In her role as head teacher, Kathleen says that she cannot overtly criticise the government but she did say that during this crisis she does feel that the education sector stepped into a “gap in leadership and direction” and helped out those in need.
“Across the education sector, there has been a significant, massive shift, it honestly can’t be underestimated. My job has completely changed, and it all happened in a matter of hours,” said Kathleen.
“Once we got the food sorted, our next job then was making sure that the children were safe. A lot of our children are in lock-down in homes that are less than ideal, so that was a whole new mountain to climb,” she said.
When put to her that the parameters of her role as a teacher have expanded beyond anything she really could have expected, Kathleen said that she could not agree more.
“Absolutely, without a doubt. The whole thing has changed. The whole school operation is being run out of people’s spare rooms. We’ve had to learn so much more about technology. We’re all now amazing at using Microsoft Teams, and I must give a huge shout-out to the team that I work with. They’ve not missed a step, they’ve been brilliant throughout,” she said.
As for a potential return date to the school environment, Kathleen reckons that they won’t see a return to that for quite a long time yet, and handling that return safely and securely is their next big challenge.