Julie Jay: I’m trying to be the ‘kind’ of teacher I want my own children to have

I was always a bit of a soft touch, but since having kids I have become a total marshmallow, and I doubt even students think this a good thing

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I can't say whether or not being a teacher has informed my parenting, but being a parent has changed the way I teach. I want to be the teacher I would like my own child to have.

I am not saying I am a good teacher — the odds of me being described as such are slim. Even slimmer are the odds of me being described as a good parent, because by any 2026 metric I am average at best.

But since having children, I have changed as a person, and that is no more evident than when I am in the seomra ranga.

I was never one for shouting, even pre-motherhood, but I did on occasion, if a group were doing things like throwing onions around the classroom, locking me in storage cupboards, or lighting cigarettes on school grounds. You know, the run-of-the-mill, minor infractions that come with teaching in the leafier parts of South County Dublin.

I was also known to raise my voice, if I was being ignored repeatedly or somebody continually talked over me; no doubt I was triggered less by the student in front of me and more by the PE teacher not texting me back.

But now I can honestly count on one hand the number of times — since returning to teaching part-time four years ago — that I have shouted at a student.

Becoming a parent has made me a softer teacher, which I would have previously thought impossible: I have always been a marshmallow, both inside and outside school gates.

I know marshmallows don’t get the best results out of their students. Students, in my experience, secretly love a teacher who runs a tight ship, who nips misbehaviours in the bud, who writes notes in journals, and follows through on threats. Within this environment, students can thrive academically, and it is probably to the betterment of all.

But when I walk into a classroom and am met with a child who won’t sit down or who hasn’t done their homework, I am soft with them because I also want people to be soft with my children, when the time comes, which it inevitably will.

For me, the most important thing is that the children are happy coming into the classroom, that they feel safe, and, most of all, that they feel seen. I am not saying I am Ireland’s answer to Ms Honey. I am sure some students can’t stand me and are dreading seeing me return in a couple of weeks, but, mostly, I am trying to be the type of teacher I would like my own children to have.

Unfortunately for me, between naíonara and junior infants, the bar is impossibly high when it comes to the teachers my own two have had.

While I am, of course, thrilled that they have had such a golden introduction to formal schooling, I am worried that I am really letting the side down over on the other side of the fence: Secondary school.

The fact that my little guy’s junior infant teacher managed to stay so kind and encouraging throughout the year — while simultaneously teaching two other class groups — has me a little abashed that I did, on occasion, get cross with a student or two in a class that had a six-to-one pupil to teacher ratio.

On those days early in my career, I drove home and didn’t leave school matters in school. I carried the shame of getting annoyed, and reminded myself that if anyone got similarly irked with my own children, I’d be fuming.

As a parent, you want your child to be met with grace: Grace to make mistakes, to forget stuff, to behave poorly. You also want to give children — both your own and other people’s — the benefit of the doubt. After all, nothing hurts more as a child than being accused of something you didn’t do, whether the person pointing the finger is holding a whiteboard marker (teacher) or a wooden spoon (parent or a teacher, if the subject is home economics).

As a result, I have always been slow to pin any crime on anyone, to such an extent that when my classroom was destroyed with red paint, and I found the suspect standing there, holding a brush covered with red paint, I still believed his claims that he had just been trying to clean it up. I had literally caught this child red-handed, and still, no teacher’s warning note was forthcoming.

It was a clear disciplinary fail, much like this week, when my nearly six-year-old insisted daddy was the one who used a chair to get up to the cupboard, to get to the sugar, to knock it all over the counter. I chose to believe him because we have yet to install CCTV in the kitchen.

I’ll make sure I am retired by the time my own children land in my current secondary school, because I know the teacher notes for failure to follow instructions, sit still, or row in will be coming thick and fast after the first induction week.

And I don’t fancy sitting beside a colleague in the staffroom who has written a note to my son for failing to complete homework. Especially when the person most likely to have attempted to complete the homework was me.