Audio Episode 15 - Tomás Ó Ruairc on poetry, Bazinga and authentic communication

Hi, my name's Joe Houghton and this is the Plus One Podcast. I feel really honoured today that my guest is Tomas O'Rourke, and I hope I've pronounced that right. Great. Who wears many hats. He is, amongst other things, CEO of the Teaching Council of Ireland. A poet and a writer, and has had a varied career in teaching and more recently in educational leadership. He co-hosts the Lighting a Fire podcast series, hosts the Learning for All webinars, produces a great blog called Bazinga that I really look forward to pinging into my feed now. And so I guess from Bazinga that you're a fan of The Big Bang Theory.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I guess you must be because that's one of Sheldon's quotes, isn't it? Your Twitter profile describes you as proud father, fortunate husband, poet, enthusiastic learner and teacher. I learn, reflect and share, chase the wind and touch the sky. And I just love that order of the descriptions because for me, that kind of tells me what's fundamentally important to you and the order. So let's start there. I mean, let's just kick us off with that one because that's a lovely introduction to you.

What's fundamentally important to me. I think, Joe, and thank you for the very generous introduction, it's great to have this opportunity just to think and talk about what really matters to us all. And I think it's fair to say that what's fundamentally important to me, my clear understanding of it has deepened over time. So when I was in school, I was one of those hit-the-books people.

Okay.

You know, get the results. passed the exams, etc. But I do remember vividly coming into my late teens and early college years that I was getting super results, full points to Leaving Cert, all that kind of stuff, but missing a relationship in my life, missing a girlfriend as it happened at the time, without this aching gap. And I think that probably explains the Twitter profile piece. And it's almost like a reminder to myself as much as a statement of fundamental truth. There are times in life where you might forget those things, get up and devote, like we did it last, maybe in the very parts of COVID crazy hours, big pressures and so on. I remember very clearly actually getting frustrated that my wife and the kids were going out for walks each day because the girls were at home and schools were closed. I think, oh, they're going for walks, why can't I? I can't even join them. I was thinking I couldn't have a more favorable circumstance. I'm at home, I'm literally upstairs from them, what's stopping me? So that process of reflection and constant kind of self-challenge proud father, fortunate husband, and so on. It's really that sense of when you put it out there, it's a commitment in public.

Yes.

And it's a healthy reminder.

But isn't it true what you say, that sometimes we need to remind ourselves? We need to have it almost in front of us now and then. And I was just the same. I mean, you know, back-to-back Zoom calls, all that kind of stuff. And 5 o'clock, Pretty much every day for the last 18 months, we've done the park. And, you know, now we have a new Labrador puppy to do the park with as well. And sometimes even just for 20 minutes at 12 o'clock or half 12 or whatever between, you know, meetings or just take part of the lunch break or whatever, just walk. It's become so important to us all.

Hugely, hugely, hugely. Yeah.

So, I mean, that was a lovely start. So poet, enthusiastic learner and teacher, reflection and sharing and stuff. So, I mean, you know, I met you first when you were on one of the panels for the Innovation Academy. And, you know, I thought, Tomasz, there's no way he's gonna even reply back to a request. I was flabbergasted when I got the reply saying you'd love to come on. So that's wonderful. But I mean, you seem seem to be a sharer. I mean, you run a podcast, you do the webinars, you do the blog. This seems to be in your DNA.

Yes, and I'm realizing more and more just how much it is. So again, like, you know, in school, the general sense, what I remember would be a sense of you get the notes and you keep it to yourself because you've got to get the top results, the top marks to get into the course you want to get. And yet when I went back to an awards ceremony in my school, CBS St. Mary's Academy in Carlow, a fellow student who's now a PE teacher, Mick Yough, spoke very— of a Tomas I hardly remember, to be honest— and saying, you know, you were very generous with your time, you were always there to help us with assignments. And it's good to be reminded of that too. So the sharing, yes, I think How is it my DNA? I don't know. I suppose maybe my father, for example, was— I mean, I always remember one of my clearest memories of my father, who's still alive, thank God. He would be involved in the local group water scheme on a voluntary basis, so that sense of giving to the community. It was no paid service or whatever, and he was out fixing a leak himself. He was a senior manager in Avonmore at the time, so he wasn't— I mean, he's good with his hands. He was out fixing a leak on the side of the road, and the in the buckets of rain. I'll use the polite term, in the buckets of rain. And the following day, he was having dinner with the Russian ambassador because at the time Russia was opening up. The dairy companies were trying to, you know, there's a whole thing to market your business in that space. And I always remember that juxtaposition of giving of yourself to no matter what kind of office you may hold, no matter what kind of circles you've been moving in, it's important to be of service, to give what you can.

Yes.

was inspired, and I think I also was very inspired by the example of teachers in school who— my Irish teacher, for example, Pauline Tully, paid for me to go to the Gaeltacht in 3rd year for an Easter course, so as to train as a kinnair, a leader. And that set me on a 10-year journey of going back to the Gaeltacht because you got a scholarship if you became a leader and so on. So that sense, I was inspired by the examples, and, you know, be it small gestures, big gestures, to give others a helping hand. Yeah, and I think that's— and I particularly— that's why I responded to your invitation so readily, Joe, is that I always know in conversations like this, precisely because I don't know what's ahead of me, I'm going to grow. And I hope that you might grow in this conversation too.

I'm sure I will. I already have done by encountering your writing, because I'd heard of Thomas O'Rourke, but I didn't know about Thomas O'Rourke, and I didn't know anything about you really. And now I've kind of— I've read most of your blog articles.

I am sorry, Joel.

I thoroughly enjoyed them. No, I mean, you write lyrically. I mean, I wish I could write like that. And you obviously— I don't know whether you just spend all day looking up quotes or whether you are really that well read, but probably a bit of both.

I plead the Fifth on that one, Joel.

But I mean, and the cultural references come from far and wide, don't they? You know, I mean, there's academic stuff, there's, you know, there's Sheldon and The Mandalorian. And all kinds of stuff's coming in, Khalil Gibran.

Well, the thing is, I kind of observing myself and hearing back from others, so I do like to go on flights of fancy, I love lyrical language. I did the poetry masterclass recently where the tutor, well, Mary O'Donnell, she's a member of Aisthána, so it's more than just a tutor, commented on my sensitivity to melody of language. Yes, I think you're picking up on the same thing, but I'm always keen to anchor myself with a wisp of roguishness. Hence the Bazinga title, you know, that it's— Sheldon's one of the most intelligent characters on the program and he's just— Yeah, and yes, his exclamation is bazinga, and that's his effort at humour, for example. The minute he was using this, I thought, God, that'd be a great title for a blog. So yeah, no, the blog and where that— oh, and the references, I think there's 2 secrets to the trade, I'd say, for me there. One is I set myself the challenge about 20— I'm on block 20 now, so about 20 weeks ago— that every Sunday morning without any pre-planned agenda, I would write something to reflect on what's grabbing my attention in or around that time. It could be during the week, an article I read in the paper, and typically you get fairly good rich pickings in The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Irish Times. You get something in those 3, or the books I'm reading. So there's an immediacy to the thing. But Evernote, I have it. I'm with— I have an account with Evernote for 10 years now, and I tag stuff. Too many tags, actually. But that's very handy for if you're— if you're— if you're— I find myself going on a train of thoughts. That reminds me of a note from such and such a time. I'll go dig up the course if I can and go looking for it. Um, so the, the logo of Evernote is very apt. It's an elephant, you know, and it really helps you get it.

Yeah.

That, that's where the, the, the— but I, I have an eclectic taste in music as well. Christy Moore, the Foo Fighters, you know, more recent modern stuff as well. There's an innate longing in me for beauty.

Yes.

Of any kind.

Yeah.

And I remember going to a concert of Martin Hayes's, the fiddler, for example, the first time I heard him play in the National Concert Hall. God be with the days. And I remember thinking, I love listening to music, and my wife says I'm a musical ear. She studied music now formally to level 8 and so on, so she'd be much more immersed in the area than I would be. But I remember thinking, you know, you know instinctively when you've been in the company of genius of any kind. Martin is a classic example. When you see him on stage, when you hear his music, you might not have a clue how he's got to that level of proficiency, but you are ecstatic. You are bathed in the one. And that's that again, come back to your earlier comment, a genius that shares.

Yes.

Genius that shares its gift. Martin is very— he, he, I remember he taught, actually I was going to a symposium in the Burren College of Art from where I got the idea for Beacons. And not knowing much about how the Agenda would work and so on, but he was a kind of an artist in residence for the event. And on the dinner of the first or second night, he did a mixture of a kind of a reflection with the audience in the restaurant and playing some pieces.

Hmm.

And I always remember he played a short, kind of very sample standard piece from a traditional music piece, and he said, if you listen to the variations in the lines, actually what traditional music is, is a series of conversations. that the lines respond to each other. So the first line—

Yeah, they come in and out and it's really a conversation.

And I thought that there's something in that. So yeah, so a genius that shares is a genius that appeals to me.

That's wonderful. And I mean, in the last 2 minutes you've mentioned reading, so obviously reading is important to you. I mean, you know, that's 3 major newspapers plus all the books that you're reading and stuff, so you feel like reading is important. You've got lovely photography up behind you. And I'm a photographer, so I mean, you know, I see that. You're talking about music. I remember when I was 18, Segovia, Andrés Segovia, came to Bolton where I was in the north of England. Can you imagine? And he played, and it must have been one of his last live concerts.

Wow.

He played the evening in Bolton, and I remember sitting there just awestruck, kind of Realizing that I was in the presence of genius. And he was retuning his guitar on stage because the lights were turned up too high and it was changing the pitch. So while he was playing, he was retuning his guitar. I mean, and it was just phenomenal. And it wasn't perfect, you know, but it didn't matter.

No, no.

All these different art forms inform you. Do you think that's important? Do you think it's important for people generally or educators particularly to take in different influences from the arts?

I do. That's a very good question actually. No, I hadn't seen that one coming.

And it's not on my list either.

In school, it's a textbook, you do your essays, it's very much, you know, and I loved my school, my education, but there was no— woodwork was for the other streamed classes. We did mechanical drawing, so didn't get much opportunity to work with my hands either. And that's been a process of ever-ending discovery. I'm innately drawn to a longing for beauty of all kinds. So my eldest brother, that would be a much more accomplished photographer than I would be, but those are all my own photos you see over my shoulder here. Yeah, that's it. The ones are taken from the eldest of one of my best friends from college in Wexford, Cillian Doyle, but the other ones are from me. If you're taking a diversity of sources, absolutely. Recently I'm working my way through Mark Nepo's Drinking from the River of Light.

Yes, and you quoted him on your last book.

Yes, yeah, and I'm working through that for a year now and I'm only about two-thirds of the way through because it's a series of reflections. To do it properly, it takes a long time. The most recent one is about exploring windows, the window of the eyes, the window of the heart, and so on, and one of the reflections then asks you to say to reflect on what's your favourite window, and I thought of the window of the ear because, to the chagrin of some of my colleagues in the council, I said recently apparently the ear is one of the few, unlike the eyes, that never close at all. Even when you're asleep, the ears never close, they're always taking in, always. I think that's why music and song and so on are such an important part of our lives. And I think I wrote in the reflection that they must trickle down into the heart in ways that you're simply not aware of.

Yeah.

But when you tap the water table, the geyser bursts. So yes, I mean, beautiful pictures, beautiful. And even on a neuroscience level, I understand there's actually a positive impact when you— if I was to cast my eyes out the window now, apparently there's a momentary relaxation for the brain because I've gone from a very narrow focus here on the screen to a sky horizon, for example.

Yes.

So beauty, imagery, you know, what's this, um, is it Keats? All you who are vexed and tired, feast your eyes upon the wideness of the sea. So yes, imagery, song, and, and, and even poetry. And poetry's got a bad rep in terms of— and some people— I've recently established a poetry group of a Friday evening. It's a pure voluntary thing with 5, 6 people, and it's not an academic analysis. It's very much a case of bring a favorite poem, could be your own composition, You read it, we have a moment's silence, and then whatever your personal response to that might be, say it.

Yeah.

And you can feel this kind of sense of— it's actually another portal into life.

It is, isn't it? And poetry is a way of expression, whether you write it or whether you read it, but it's a different level of textual expression, isn't it?

It is.

Very much more visceral and emotional and kind of Yes, and it's a paring back.

I mean, I think poetry for me is almost— it's the poems and it's the conversation around poems.

Yes.

Because that's how you unpack. You read it with a certain interpretation, but that's in your own head, and when you hear others talking about it, it's like— and that's coming back to your point about the diversity of input. For me, I remember vividly my English teacher Louise Williamson, who passed away a couple years ago unfortunately, in the junior cycle. she would always get us as a class to talk about the poem before we wrote about it, and what you found then was 15 other voices, inputs coming into your head, you know, almost, you really, oh, I never, you literally never thought of that.

I never thought of that, I didn't hear that in the poem, I didn't make that linkage in my head, all that stuff, yeah.

So what I love is discerning patterns where they've been invisible before, that whether it's a, you know, a song remind me of a poem or vice versa, remind you of an image or a painting or an experience previously. And yes, I think a real rich diversity of exposition, of putting yourself in the way, get out of your own head and get in the way so that as life passes you by, it really enriches you. It opens you up and helps you grow.

I love you kind of bringing that up because I remember very vividly, and I was probably only 8 or 9, which is like 50 years ago now, and I remember Xanadu. Yeah, you know, in Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree. And I always remember that phrase, through caverns measureless to man, down to the sunlit sea. And I always remember reading that line and it kind of conjuring up in my head this amazing kind of vista, which was so real to me and has remained real to me ever since. And I think that's probably why I've always loved Tolkien and, you know, Hall of the Mountain King and all this kind of stuff. it just awoke in me that wonder of that scene that was in here that somebody else had written all those years ago, isn't it? And had yet kind of sparked this thing in me, which was just amazing. Yeah, fantastic. Let's come back a little bit. Who were your educational inspirations and why? And you've listed a huge number of teachers and stuff, so just, you know, pick one or two and just tell me why. Tell me why they were important to you. What did they give you? What did they spark?

Yeah, I'll pick one or two. So the first I'll pick, and I could talk about them all as you say, but Louise Williamson, the English teacher, as well as that thing of, you know, conversing before you write. Yeah, I always remember there was a key moment when we were studying and it was the Lake whatever text we were studying, but she, out of the blue, Maria, drew a linkage between the line in The Merchant of Venice and the line in The Lake Isle of Innisfree by Yeats.

Right.

So The Merchant of Venice is where Portia says, the quality of mercy is not strained, to drop it as the gentle rain from heaven. And she commented that this, in her experience, in her past, had reminded her of the line from The Lake Isle of Innisfree, and I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow. And I remember thinking, wow, you know, centuries apart, different genres linking. And it— I don't think I consciously necessarily formed the idea, but so I think looking back, it certainly planted the seed of there are linkages everywhere, there are connections everywhere, and that resonance that can ambush you in a good way is just waiting there in the long grass, and again, in a good way. So I think she in particular, at that stage of my life, had a seminal influence on my sense of what teaching should be about.

Yes.

Not necessarily about absorbing and vibing and regurgitating, but about exploring with a sense of wonder. And towards the end of her life, when she was getting ill, I visited her a couple of times, and she would have had a profound influence in terms of really the meaning of life and her courage and her fortitude and speaking of her family and her love of her family and all the rest. So Yeah, she'd be one, definitely, I would say. I'm trying to think of all the other— there's other teachers like, I think John Coolahan, actually, Professor John. I'll go with John Coolahan now, it's the second one I would mention. And again, there's a pattern here, he's not with us anymore, unfortunately, died a couple of years too. And I got to know him quite well in my time as CEO of the Teaching Council. And I remember the first time I went to visit him He was in his home and he sat on, I think, what it would be his chair, and I sat on mine, and he expounded as John would be wont to do. And he had this funny way of doing it in an inclusive way, so you didn't feel like you'd been talked at. I mean, I'm being immersed by erudition and insight and so on.

Yeah.

And the following year, I don't know if it was deliberate or not, but he swapped seats and he grilled me and he kind of got me to talk.

Right.

And I remember thinking, okay, if John Coon's putting it here, that's a massive, you know, but I suppose, um, compliment, certainly a huge honour. Um, and I think particularly admired, apart from that, the inspiration part comes from he chaired the first and today's only National Education Convention in the country, out of which came the Education Act of '98 and the Teaching Council Act of 2001, actually, amongst other pieces, I think. And that sense of a big conversation bringing everybody together. Okay, let's really get down to brass tacks. What do we value in education? We, we so much to be proud of in Irish education, still do, but from a position of strength, what are we missing? What might we do better? And he was tasked with hosting that big conversation, holding that space. And both that skill but the purpose to which it was put, I would have huge admiration for. And I think he's also would have stood out for I mean, he was at the top of his game in terms of academic work and research and so on. He was internationally reputed, the OECD, but his ability to navigate the political space as well as the academic and the education policy, to translate. Yes, he's lovely with his hands. He always had the hands going in this kind of roly-poly way when he was talking, you know, integration, progression, and so on. So he would be another major influence and inspiration in education.

That's lovely. That's lovely. And another thing that I loved when you put that list of teachers, and it's like there's a dozen more names, Almost all of them are primary school teachers. So they were very formative years, weren't they? That, you know, there must have been other things happen to you later, but these were primary and you've still put them down now.

Yes.

That's amazing. That's wonderful. It just shows, doesn't it, that no matter what level you're teaching at, whether you're teaching, you know, a PhD or master's level, or whether you're a secondary school teacher or a primary school teacher or a Montessori teacher or whatever, you can Yes, yes.

Well, I mean, like, my Irish language teacher in school, in post-primary, Pauline Tully, literally set me on the journey of a lifetime. When I went to the Gaeltacht in those summers, I mean, I was baptized Thomas O'Rourke, right? By the time I got to college and I'd been to the Aran Islands, Inishmore, 3 or 4 years in a row at that stage, I changed my name on the register to Tomás O'Rourke.

Okay.

And that's been— everyone knows me as Tomás now except my mother and my father and my siblings, you know. It's Tomas, whereas they still call me Thomas at home. So I literally re-adopted my identity as a result.

Yes, wow.

And I speak Irish to my kids every day, so all that, that's a life-changing intervention for sure.

Yeah, I mean, as a blow-in from the UK, you know, I've only been here 21 years, I have 2 Irish—

That's not a blow-in, Joe, you're one of us now.

I mean, they come home with Irish And I mean, I'm just, you know, it just fries my head. Oh dear. Yes, I must find a good teacher somewhere.

I'll help you out there, don't you worry.

Yeah, well, you might know one or two, won't you? So, okay, so, you know, you're head of the Teaching Council, and, you know, this is your space. So what does excite you most about Irish education at the moment? And what's What's happening? What's happening in terms of an educator who might be listening to the podcast that we should know about, that we should be getting excited about, that we should be getting involved in?

I think things have been cracked open and we're having conversations we never thought we would have and we're now asking, I think, better questions.

Is that because of COVID or just—

Oh, I think so, hugely. Yeah, yeah. COVID, like, I think I've said a couple of times in public now, but apocalypse, apparently the original meaning is unveiling rather than crisis or end of world or end of times. So what COVID exposed to everyone, and literally, you know, because it affected every single person in the country, every parent, every teacher. For example, parents have a newfound appreciation of how complex teaching is.

Yes.

Okay, parents have— we all in society and the economy has a newfound appreciation of how important schools are to the practice functioning of society and the economy. This is at a visceral level. So we've always argued in kind of highfalutin terms, oh, education, as an island nation with no natural resources, no oil fields and so on, our people, our talent, are our key resource. Like Finland, education is more vital to us than it would be, let's say, like Russia or the States and so on.

Right.

So we've always known that or argued that, but at a fundamental practical level, even working from home, can't work without schools being open. No, because parents can't—

we know that now.

We know, right? So I wasn't grey before COVID Get off, get off out of that zone. I'm not buying that. But, um, and I think, for example, in not in any— I think what's really interesting is the questions are being asked and there's genuinely no predetermined agenda behind them. So, for example, many people are wondering what exactly is the purpose of state certification of exams, of terminal exams in 6th year. What do we really want to be doing as our young people, young adults graduate from school, whether they go further education, apprenticeships, or they go degree routes and so on, all the rest, or go straight into employment? What do we want their lasting memory of school to be? Yeah, I was speaking to someone in the Scottish context earlier today and they were talking about how there are 4 key areas of development that the Scottish Government has set for our education, only one of which is successful learning. Confident Citizen responses, a few that come out of the other 3. And the point they were making was that the exam system will only answer, will only give dials to the government for one of those 4 areas.

Yeah, yeah.

So, and this is where, you know, in a democracy, thankfully, where collectively society is supposed to be determining through its political representatives, well, we'll start with what our goals are, then we work out how we want to achieve them. But I think heretofore the debate has been, well, this is how we're achieving our goals, so wherever you adjust the end of the pipeline, the pipe's going to be the same.

Yes.

And that doesn't— that never really made any sense, and it makes a lot less sense now. So what's exciting now is that everybody's open to those conversations, right? And how schools responded to the crisis in terms of upskilling of teachers in their thousands between September and December, so that the nature of remote learning— and I've seen this in my own house here— was light-years from where it was in March, April last year, because schools quietly just got into it, teachers upskilled themselves, and around the country the experience was moved on in, in so many ways. And now, because so many things have been done that people said couldn't be done, it's like what else is possible?

Yes, there's that question that's been asked now, isn't it? Yeah, if we could do that, yeah, we could do almost anything, can't we?

Yeah, that's number one. And what's really interesting, and we did the webinar series we referred to at the beginning, and again, it's not lip service, it's not platitudes, the importance of relationships in education is now explicated, is now out there in the open, that everyone's saying, oh my God, What's the difference? A school, people gather together in the one space to help each other to learn. Yeah, at its simplest, that's what schools are about, and that's what people miss the most. I mean, my youngest daughter was practically in tears as the last week of school came to an end.

Oh.

I don't want this to end, Mummy, because she's gonna miss her friends, her teacher. The teacher's really crying. So that— and that's so— and it looks like it's almost in some respects sometimes feel that the word robust is the word that scares me the most in education discourse, because what good is a robust system if the people aren't being included?

Yeah.

So that's the exciting part, that we're having conversations, we're asking new questions, and everyone seems open to the conversation, whereas heretofore you might have had kind of adoption of positions very early on. Well, here's our red line, here's our red line, you can negotiate between those 2 extremes. And everyone's kind of saying, actually, you know what, what the real value what's important in education, and now while we're exploring that, let's be open to how we might verify or determine the sort of, you know, how those outcomes are achieved. And the digital evolution or revolution is obviously very exciting, but that's been building for a while. I think it's more about we're now really open, as per, I think, the government's— the Programme for Government talks about the Citizens' Assembly for Education. That can't come soon enough in my view. I think the momentum is building for that in terms of—

Right.

That opens, because that's the exciting thing I think that's happening right now in education.

So I mean, this thing about conversations, and I mean, you know, I met you first in the Innovation Academy, and that program brings together educators from all different spaces. I mean, my instance of the diploma had a teacher who teaches in prisons, it had primary school teachers, it had a vet, it had doctors, it had myself from the business school, you know, and it was It was just such an amazing experience learning from all these different teachers. So how do we make that bigger? Yeah, you know, whether that's just in Ireland or whether it's on an even bigger stage, how do we connect teachers and lecturers and coaches and, you know, primary school and secondary school and high school and, you know, how do we have a proper conversation rather than, you know, just talking to each other in the common room, which we don't have anymore because we're still not up there, are we?

No.

You know, how can we connect all the educators together and learn from each other? Because I've learned so much in the last year and a half from other educators, and they weren't the educators that I thought I would learn from.

Yes.

You know, I mean, Aideen was a primary school teacher on my course, and I wondered whether I was going to get anything from, you know, anything that kind of came from a primary school teacher. Actually, I learned more from Aideen than probably from anybody else on the whole course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hazard a guess that— I don't know Aideen, but she might have been as surprised as you were by that. I think sometimes the lack of confidence— but sometimes people might conflate confidence with arrogance.

Yes.

And yet, and that might be an Irish trait, I don't know if it's unique or not, but certainly teachers themselves, right? I remember a teacher at Faleshar in the second or third year, um, coming up to me and saying, sorry for interrupting you, Tomas, I'm just a teacher. And I said, don't ever apologize for being a teacher, that's one of the most important professions we have. So how do we get the conversations going? There's 2 things I would say. One is the piece about our understanding as a society of what teachers' role is, and I'll explain more of that in a second. And the second is the Beacons project we're doing with the EU and the OECD.

Right, and I didn't know about Beacons, so you need to tell us about that. Yeah, so give us those 2 points.

So the first one is simply that I think the default position— if we think— how should I put this— the stereotypical assumption some media commentary out there can very often, you know, education is conservative, behind the times, not keeping pace with innovation, and so on. Number one, I would challenge that robustly, to talk against myself and use that term. But number two, if we believe there is a challenge with teachers not being up to speed with innovation and so on, we need to give them the time to actually get their heads around what's going on. So, and I think very often sometimes there's a kind of a comment made or a discourse that will say if teachers aren't teaching in the classroom, they're not doing their job. So the idea of doing your teachers' professional learning, even some of it in your own time, to some people would be anathema. That, you know, I'm a parent, I want you in the classroom doing your job teaching my kids, and don't spare me your thing about doing leadership development in a program, whatever.

How am I supposed to improve if you don't give me that time? I mean, this podcast, those— exactly right now, this is funded by the HCI, you know, commune funding. Yes, to do exactly that. Give me a term off. Yes, explore innovation in teaching.

Exactly, exactly. So I think that that's one piece we've got. I think other professions are ahead of teaching in that regard, that it's understood and assumed your professional learning is part of your core role as a professional. I'm not quite sure that in the wider kind of societal view that teaching is quite there yet. So I think, and we know from Failship alone because they're coming in their thousands, you create the space, they will take the time. But if you create the favorable space to mix freely, not just for the—

Build it and they will come.

Actually, I know, I watched that movie. I know it's a cliché, but it actually— as a former lecturer in UCD, Alan Harrison, God rest him, said one time, the problem with teachers is that they're very often true.

Yeah.

But anyway, so I think that we know from— we've hard evidence to show, given the opportunity and the support of the space, teachers will freely mix and mingle and innovate, no problem. Primary— take your comment another way— a primary— a former primary principal member of council, Colm Hart, who went to Fáilte a couple of times, said the biggest advantage, the biggest breakthrough of Fáilte was bringing primary and post-primary teachers together for the first time in a common space.

Yeah.

And he was as a primary teacher himself. So that's number one. And then number two, in terms of facilitating the conversations, we are working out the answer, I think, to your question, Joe, in another way, or hoping to do so, through the Beacons project with the EU and the OECD. So firstly, what is Beacons in a nutshell? It's a model of conversational engagement between teachers, parents, and students at the local community level where they talk as equals effectively on matters of importance to them. No predetermined agenda, there's a particular skill of facilitation involved, obviously. We've had 7 or 8 pilot events in Steyman and Ennis in County Clare, Ballinglass in Wicklow, northeast inner city in Dublin, where about 50 people with a mix of those voices came together and blew themselves away in terms of what they learned about each other and their own sense of agency. So we applied then to the EU under what's called a technical support instrument, whereby if member states come to them with areas or ideas they particularly want to explore but want, you know, top-class international expertise and support, they can apply to an EU fund to do that. So we brought our idea to the EU. The EU saw it was particularly pertinent in the context of COVID and school community resilience and recovery, and we were awarded support over a 2-year time frame, 24 months. And what happens is the EU commission another body, in this case the OECD, who will look at the international context for stakeholder engagement. They will pilot a model. Is it possible? This is a question that I don't— And in terms of true innovation, This might not work.

No, but that's what innovation's for.

But the EU, the OECD are also watching. Joe's having less room to get out of this one, you know. But the idea is, is it possible to scale a model so that your vision of conversational engagement between teachers, parents, and students, and scientists, and business communicators, and so on, can actually become the norm?

But it's like the old quality circles in GE that we used to use.

Okay.

You know, where you basically brought a set of different stakeholders into the room and said, right, talk, and whatever you come up with, yeah, we're gonna make a change.

Yes.

You recommend a change and we will implement it. So recommend a change and we'll implement it.

That's it. That's it. Okay, so this is going to work. I'm going to show you, it's going to work in education. So yeah, that's exactly— that sounds very, very similar. And it's almost as if education is working so well, people have not seen the need for it to do this before.

Yes.

It's almost become a victim of its own success.

There was this huge disruption with COVID that threw out that— it threw a spanner into the works for a while, didn't it?

Yeah. And I think the other piece of that inclusion in particular is bringing— asking huge questions of the system. And I think, and it's such an emotionally charged space for parents of children with additional or special needs.

Yes.

Teachers themselves under pressure, you know, and not having ready access to the research and the resources that they feel would be necessary. And I think that in particular, and I think maybe the penny would start to drop in the wider system on this one, but it's getting there now, it's beyond the what. It's not about maybe a particular policy interface, but we need to actually reconnect with each other in new ways as people because this dialogue of the deaf where the parents have the research very often in ways that the teachers don't, are saying, I want my child to be taught this way, and it's just going, the hands are up, you know, and all the rest. So I think we need to refashion the conversation because the expectations of inclusive education, the social and moral aspects of it, are beyond syllabus, beyond curriculum, beyond the particular resource. It's about, I'm just a human being trying to do my best, I'm a parent trying to do my best, I'm a teacher trying to do my best. And instead of having this conflict, can we actually have a conversation?

I mean, things like inclusion and accessibility. I mean, I've been teaching now for 15 years or so, and I mean, I felt so guilty at the end of last year when I completed the UDL digital badge, Universal Design for Learning, that AHEAD.ie have kind of rolled out to 600-odd last year, and it's going to be rolled out to probably 2,000-odd Brilliant. Yeah, Lisa Padden's heading that up, who I'm talking to on the podcast actually in a week or two. So how do we get teachers, one, aware, and two, give them the time and the space to kind of take this stuff on and make those little plus ones, you know, and it doesn't have to be completely redefine their whole teaching style, does it? It's just make small changes. And incrementally improve, but there's a fear.

Yes.

And they're pressured on time because they have curriculums to teach and the rest of it, and they've got parents looking over their shoulder and like that. So how do we enable, you know, the teacher in the national school down the road to make these changes?

I think it's not so much about enabling. I know the question is coming from But it's about, you said, making them aware and creating a space that they will— and inviting them in.

Yes.

So I've had plenty of time in the Teaching Council to reflect on the dynamics of change management at a systemic level, learning from mistakes as well as achievements, to be clear. And I think the next— I suspect in the next 5 years, one of the big issues that the Council will have to look at is the whole area of teachers' professional learning and how and the systemic recognition of that, the purpose of which would be to enhance the quality of learning experience for everybody.

Because I mean, CPD now, I don't know for teachers at secondary and primary level, but what I hear, and this is anecdotal, is they do their CPD hours in the summer, in the summer holidays. Because there's no time in the term time.

So there's different— I know in primary, for example, there's what's called summer courses, and they get what's called EPV days during the year, extra personal vacation days for them. Post-primary, you know, there is pressure, I think, to create the— what's this the NCCA called— the conducive landscape.

Yes.

So one will be, and I think curriculum is heading this way, it's all about more space. There's only so much time in the day, but create more space and the right invitation So FEILTE is one example, and we want to grow FEILTE, I think, at a regional level. Now, there's been some very innovative schools like Kinsale Community School, Coláis Síochráide in Clondalkin have taken our FEILTE Scuola brand and run with that. Actually, Kinsale Community School inspired the idea of a FEILTE Scuola where they actually use those Croke Park hours, which have a mixed reputation amongst post-primary teachers, but they do their own thing with them, and they actually run 6 parallel workshops where teachers in the school teach each other of an innovative methodology they themselves have discovered. The power of peer-to-peer—

Oh, it's teaching.

Powerful stuff, powerful stuff. And, you know, they really are cutting edge in that space. And to see that— and so in some respects, the core prac hours are nothing new. The CPD the teachers were engaging in has always been available.

Yes.

But what's the difference is they create— they made— they chose their own space and made their own time to share it internally at the school level. So if you look at the research that Gillian William has, I think, published some years ago, the degree of intra-school variation professional practice tends to be greater than the degree of inter-school variation.

Right, okay.

Yeah, which is what I found quite fascinating. So that importance of at school level sharing the learning so that the peers teach is quite important based on the evidence that we're aware of from Dylan William. That's one. The other space aspect would be the curriculum and how that's understood and mediated, and I think the NCC are heading in that direction. So they're talking more and more of curricular frameworks, so less prescription of content and more scope for the teacher to become as much a curriculum maker in real time as there would be perhaps a curriculum receiver in the past, because I think inclusive education is driving that demand. If, as Adam Harris says, when you've met a child with autism, all you can say is you've met one child with autism, their needs are so unique, people are going to be looking for a much more responsive system in the next— in the short to medium-term future. They don't want to hear about, that's what the curriculum has dictated and prescribed and therefore I can't deviate. That's not what the system is saying actually, I think, anymore. and parents won't take that anymore. And actually, I know from my own personal experience and spoken to teachers, when they're getting in the zone with the framework, the supports, initial guidance, they enjoy that experience. Any of the teachers I've met in the Innovation Academy, they're making curriculum almost in real time. They're making something new from scratch with peers from a diversity of backgrounds, and they love it. They absolutely love it. So I think that the clarity around from the system of what its expectations actually are, and the facilitation of a space for teachers, parents, and students to actually converse with each other and say, well, what do you want out of your child's education beyond the parent-teacher? That does all drive time, and that's going to have implications, I would think, in terms of, you know, the whole idea of, you know, the state growing bigger as a result of COVID the tax base to support that. But if we want kind of, you know, cutting-edge responses of that nature, teachers will definitely need time to both engage in learning, reflect on it, apply it, reflect on that application and adapt.

Yeah, because sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It's the scary thing, isn't it? Yeah. So that, I mean, we've got 5 more minutes, so I'm conscious we've got to wrap up. So talk about FELTCHER 2021 then, because that's coming up and it's transforming teaching in a sustainable world. And then we'll finish off with your +1, which was Flipped Classroom.

So Yeah, yeah. So FELT21 is our annual festival to mark World Teachers' Day. It stands for Festival of Education and Learning and Teaching Excellence, but it's okay. I didn't know that. Ah, yes, that was a toothbrush moment. Yeah, I'm not sure where the innovation handbook that appears, but that was my toothbrush moment where I come up with the title.

And I'll put the link to FELTure in the show notes.

Brilliant, brilliant. And it's an Irish language word meaning festivals. And it's a shamelessly open celebration. It's not about certificates and awards. It's about come and show and share and tell. And this year's event is taking place online again. We had the biggest audience ever last year when we went online because, again, a forced innovation because we had planned to be in the RDS, I think, or DC, I think it was. But it's going to be fully online. We had 1,500 teachers at peak audience view watching the interview with Mary Robinson last year. We had 3,000 teachers in total log in at different stages of the day. It's a mixture of Roddy Doyle as this year's keynote interviewee. We've gone for the conversational engagement there again rather than the keynote address over the last number of years, so I'm looking forward to that big time. I would have read Roddy Doyle's books and loved the films as well, actually.

Yeah.

And then there's a mixture of workshops, showcases— some of them are live, some are recorded showcases— and opportunities for Q&A and panel discussions throughout the day. And we have a particular emphasis on creativity, so we're still putting the panels together. There'll be further details available hopefully by the end of August. I will be emailing all teachers, but it's important for your listeners to understand that we're trying to grow this all the time. It's open to the public, so any— while the majority of our audience are teachers, we do engage with parents and so on. So we want students, people from all walks of life, leaders from all walks of life, come and see the incredible things teachers are doing, talk to them about those things, and have those conversations. It's a free open space for celebration and sharing of innovation and teaching and learning.

And you'll go away buzzing. I've been to a couple of these conferences recently, you know, not the ones— and I mean, I've made, you know, connections and followed up with emails and it's been amazing.

Yeah, it's my professional Christmas. It comes once a year. It's almost like a wedding. The work goes on. It's like the elves in the shop, you know, all year long getting ready for the next one. Big bang of a day and then get ready for the next one all over again. So it's really worth going to.

So will you have a long white beard that day?

I'm follicly challenged, as you can see. So I'm not worried about beards at this stage though.

Wonderful. Okay, so that was your call to action, was a 10-foot voucher. So we've put that in, that's great. So just to finish off then, you know, the podcast is called Plus One because that's from the UDL of just make one change. Make one change to your teaching practice or your classroom or whatever, and your plus one was flip classroom. portfolio approach to grammar teaching for Irish. So tell me, tell me about that.

Well, there are 2 separate ideas. I'll go with the first one, the flipped classroom, and that's inspired by, again, a primary teacher, Bianca Ní Bhrogaoin, who passed away in her early 30s some years ago, and she presented research on this. So essentially, I'm sure many of the audience are familiar with it already, but it does go back to first principles. More so, it doesn't attain. So what happens is that the teacher— and it was in primary school as I came across this— they will either make their own video material or find appropriate video material, let's say like YouTube, to essentially impart the content. And they will ask the children in the class, please watch this video content before the class on maths, whatever, next Tuesday and so on. So you take the delivery of content out of the classroom time and space and you expect the children to watch it beforehand. And what that means essentially is it really— we can talk about differentiation, it for decades nearly at this stage, but it really empowers the teacher to make it— to fully realize the potential of differentiation for every single learner. Because what it means is that the teacher now can spend almost all the class time going around to students, differentiating the content for them.

Asking questions about it and facilitating discussions.

Yes, meet them where they're at and avoiding the kind of the almost potential for humiliation in the class of asking a stupid questions and so on. They're able to flow freely around the class. And there's a lot more to it, but that's the core idea that it completely turns the idea rather than I'm going to impart the content now and you go home and practice it. It turns it completely on its head and the content is delivered via home and you actually practice and work it through. And you are much— it's actually, you know, if teaching is as much as a personal endeavor as it is a professional one, you get close to the personal heart of teaching in this process. What was interesting about the research project that Bianca McGrogan presented some years ago, she was teaching a local school, as it happens here at Griffin Educate Together, and it was part of her study for, I think it was a PhD, and she presented her interim findings. And there's a significant degree of ethnic diversity in the catchment area of the school where the mothers apparently at the time would have reasonable English, but the fathers for whatever reason largely did not.

Right.

And one of the unexpected benefits of the flipped classroom approach was the mothers told Bianca that the father's English came on in leaps and bounds. The reason being that they were by osmosis almost watching the videos with the kids at home, picking up the English. So she actually didn't— that wasn't an intended objective, but in terms of increasing the participation of parents in their children's learning, their inclusion in the community, and as well as the children's learning, it was a win-win-win-win-win.

Unintended consequences.

Oh, completely, and it doesn't require hugely expensive equipment. You know, it obviously brought on connection or some means of making sure the kids can watch the video, so there's some degree of technological equipment involved, but nothing too fancy, nothing too expensive, and actually you get a better teaching day out of it, I think, from what Bianca said.

When I first heard about flipped classroom and tried it, I was terrified as a teacher. Because like I'm going away from sage on stage, I'm going away from didactic kind of delivery, and I'm gonna have to answer questions, and I don't know what's coming, you know, I don't know the next slide on my PowerPoint deck. I mean, that's terrifying, isn't it?

That's the thing, it is, you've got much more interaction, all the questions they can ask you, it's a completely different space.

Yeah, it is, but it's a space which once you become more confident in is a much more rich space, isn't it? It's a space for you as a teacher, it's a richer space for your students.

Oh, completely.

So you've just got to kind of face the fear and do it anyway.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Listen, this has been a great hour for me. I don't know whether it was for you, but—

No, I've had great fun. Thank you so much for the opportunity, it's been brilliant.

Yeah, well, well, thank you so much for taking the time, and, uh, and I'll put all the links to everything in, in the show notes. notes. And as I say, thank you, thank you for coming on today.

Great stuff, Joe. Thanks a million.

Thank you very much.