Louise O'Neill: Teaching is a vocation, not everyone can do it
Louise O'Neill: I had been brought up to have a healthy respect for the profession, too much respect to view it as an ‘easy’ job.
When I told people I was going to Trinity to study English and History, the first thing they always said was 'oh, so you’re going to be a teacher?' The truth was, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up (god be with the days of the Celtic Tiger, when you could do an Arts Degree and just assume a well-paying job would fall into your lap upon graduation) but even at the age of 18 I knew I didn’t want to teach. Or, to be more accurate, I knew I couldn’t teach.
My mother had been a teacher before she had children, two of my aunts were teachers. I had been brought up to have a healthy respect for the profession, too much respect to view it as an ‘easy’ job. My sister did qualify as a primary school teacher and I see how she approaches her work, the seriousness with which she takes her responsibility. I saw how worried she was during the pandemic when schools were closed, her determination that no child would fall through the cracks on her watch. During the first lockdown, she sent a postcard to every boy in her class, just so they would know she was thinking of them.
