Class acts: In praise of the teachers who changed our lives 

To mark World Teachers Day on October 5, Jonathan deBurca Butler asks three well-known Irish people for memories of their most influential educators

Neil Delamere: "I had some amazing teachers but the one I always think of is Mr Osborne"

As he heads over the border and into Co Down, comedian Neil Delamere is in a reflective mood. It is early on a crisp, bright Saturday morning, and with very little traffic on the roads, he’s able to take in his surroundings.

While his talents for words and observation no doubt feed into his appreciation for the gradually imposing landscapes around him, he’s also well aware of the natural forces that brought them into being.

“I’d be driving somewhere,” says the Offaly native, “and I’d be looking out for things. If I’m in Glendalough I’d say to myself: ‘Now, there’s a great example of a ribbon lake’ or ‘That’s a classic fluvioglacial feature over there’, or if I’m driving through Antrim, I’d be saying to myself: ‘This now is an excellent example of a U-shaped valley’. For me, this sort of stuff is amazing.”

The comedian’s impressive knowledge is largely down to a teacher who made quite the impression on him when he was a young buck attending St Mary’s Secondary School in Edenderry.

“My family is quite academic,” says Delamere. “Don’t ask me to do anything practical, but I love knowledge and I enjoyed school. I had some amazing teachers, but the one I always think of is Mr Osborne. He was a geography teacher, a very tall, imposing man, and he had a natural authority because of that.

“But what I liked about him was that he was really into his subject. It’s weird; I find parallels between teaching and stand-up. Audiences are intuitive, particularly audiences in a room. They can tell whether you’re phoning it in or not, if a person is bored by the subject, and I think students are the same.

“Mr Osborne was never bored by his subject, and he was always looking at new ways to impart information about it to us.”

As well as teaching geography, Mr Osborne corrected the subject in the Leaving Certificate. As such, he had what Delamere calls “the track on what they wanted” and could therefore teach towards the exam while also enhancing a broader knowledge of the subject. This included place names and their meanings as Gaeilge; something else that Delamere looks out for as he travels up and down the country for work.

“When I see a place with Drum, I know that’s something to do with the back or the spine of a hill, or dísirt, that means there was a hermitage nearby,” says Delamere.

“So you can leave school, never dip into a subject again and forget everything about it, but if someone has taught you how things have been formed in your very environment, and has taught you well, they’ve basically inserted themselves into your brain for the rest of your life.

“It’s funny, I think about Mr Osborne quite a lot.”

‘She saw something in me’

Another person who appreciates her schooling is Newstalk’s Jess Kelly.

“It’s so important that we realise what teachers do for us beyond the ABCs,” she says.

“They can shape who we are and what we become long after we leave school, and I think they are fully deserving of their pay and their holidays.”

No doubt that sentiment will go down well with the people who shaped the tech guru back in Coláiste Íosagáin in Stillorgan, Co Dublin.

Kelly, who went to an English-speaking primary school, found the transition to an all Irish-speaking secondary quite difficult at first.

Eventually, with the help of sport where she “picked up a lot of the language” and the patient support of teachers, she grew in confidence and found a natural talent for communication.

“The teachers were amazing,” says the 37-year-old. “But there was one in particular that always comes to mind, and that was Bean Uí Uiginn, who was the vice principal at the time. She was a formidable figure.

“She was very tall with a very stern face and she used to stand at the door giving girls make-up wipes because make-up wasn’t allowed. If you were two minutes late, you got the bilóg bui, the yellow slip, which meant detention.

“She was a stickler for the rules, but for some reason she took a shine to me. I wasn’t the most academic child, but she saw something in me and got me involved in things.”

Newstalk's Jess Kelly has fond memories of the effect her vice principal at Coláiste Íosagáin in Stillorgan, County Dublin, had on her education

Kelly was the first person to chair the Coiste Glas, or Green Committee, that focused on environmental policies within the school. She would go on to organise school trips, fashion shows, and fundraisers. If there was something going on that needed to be organised, Kelly was inevitably at the centre of it.

“When you’re 14 or 15, that’s a huge responsibility,” she says.

“I was just trusted. I had the keys to the school library, for example, and I was charged with logging and digitising books.

“It might sound ridiculous, but I do think that project might have led me to the path I’m on today. The teachers could see that not only could I do what was needed, but I also had the communication skills to explain how it works and why I was doing it.

“Bean Uí Uiginn empowered me to use my other skills and talents beyond academia and I think they are the things that stand to me today.”

‘He was very supportive’

By her own admission, Fionnuala Jones was a “massive swot”. The podcaster and influencer, known online as Fionnuala Jay, went to secondary school at Coláiste Mhuire in Cobh, Co Cork, where she “loved learning” and “had a great experience”.

Always in a rush to get to where she’s going, the 31-year-old skipped Transition Year and headed straight for the final exam cycle, where she entered the classroom of Mr Kieran Walsh.

“He was my history teacher,” recalls Jones. “I think he might be the vice principal now. He made me take an interest in history in a way that really broadened my mind in terms of what history means to people and what it should mean to people now.

Fionnuala Jones, known as Fionnuala Jay attended Coláiste Mhuire in Cobh, Co Cork, where she “loved learning” and “had a great experience” Picture: Bríd O'Donovan

“I’d always been very interested in the civil rights movement, and that was the focus of my Leaving Cert history project. He was very supportive of that.”

Though he wasn’t one to hand out “praise for no reason” and he could be quite strict, Jones says she responded to Mr Walsh’s no-nonsense approach to learning.

“He was always quite direct in terms of us getting results,” she recalls. “He was very much ‘it’s up to you now. If you’ve done the work, you’ll be fine’. It wasn’t motivated by shame or panic. There was this sense of calm with him.

“His attitude was that he had done the work and that if you had too, then there was nothing to worry about in the exam. That was great for me as someone who was quite anxious about Leaving Cert.”

Jones adds: “It’s something I still check in with when things are particularly stressful or I’m coming up to a tight deadline. Just that self-intuition that if you’ve done the work, it will show.”

As the brave, new technological world creeps its way to replacing us all, stressing the importance of teachers is even more urgent.

“Ask anyone, and they will have two or three they can name that influenced them,” concludes Delamere. “I know we can do AI and there are different ways of learning now, but when you’re a teenager, having an adult who takes the time to show an interest in you and how you’re learning is the big thing. It’s hard to overstate their importance.”