The truth is, I’ve participated in some really edifying and sustaining events in 2025. One of my PhD supervisors, Eamon Costello, hosted the Education after the algorithm: Co-designing critical and creative futures symposium at DCU in February, with a Critical Studies in Ed Tech meeting held the previous day on campus. Neil Selwyn has shared a report from the global meeting proceedings. Clare Thomson travelled over and we facilitated a new workshop, ‘Embedding sustainability literacies in postdigital learning design’, in which participants created zines based on the workshop prompts. We developed an OER based on the artefacts we collected. This is the video output:

I was invited to host the panel session with Rachel Fitzgerald, Juliana Raffaghelli, and James O’Sullivan. After the three presentations, we had a thoughtful conversation on the ethics and practicalities of AI in HE, and I was delighted to meet Juliana a few months later again in Zurich. It was also an unexpected and very welcome surprise to meet Sukaina Walji for the first time in person. I had no idea that she was going to be in Ireland, and I was very lucky to see her again a few months later at OER in London. Sukaina has always been kind enough to accept my invitation whenever I would ask her to join panels, etc.

As CESI chair, I hosted the annual conference on 1st March in Limerick. While the conference is always a complete blur when you’re working, this year was even more so. I blinked and it was nearly dark and the day was over. We were joined by Enda Donlon to deliver a joint keynote with Peter Tiernan (DCU). Both Enda and Peter are involved in the Erasmus+ PAIDEIA project to equip teachers with skills to integrate AI into their teaching.

Peter also hosts the Let’s Talk Education Research podcast at DCU, which has become a favourite mine as a new PhD researcher in his school.

The Irish Learning Technology Association’s (ILTA) annual conference took place in May in Waterford, and it’s always a calendar highlight as a space to catch up with old friends and new. I was particularly delighted to finally meet Jen Ross in person after my time on the PgCert in Digital Education in Edinburgh. Jen sent me home with a copy of the What’s at Stake? Young People’s Take on AI & Education zine, and she also shared the Imagining AI Futures for Education resource created as part of the AI futures for Scottish education project in her keynote address.

It was also a joy to meet Colm O’Neill (SETU) and hear about his research, EdTech as climate criminal, and I was delighted to meet him soon after again in Zurich.

As the conference closed, it was lovely to be able to share the news that Rob Lowney and I would be co-chairing the 2026 ILTA EdTech conference in Dublin City University. More on that later…

One of the calendar highlights of my year was attending and presenting at the inaugural European Conference on Critical Edtech Studies (ECCES) in Zurich in June. Based on the organising committee alone, I had my hopes up that this would be a special event, and a unique space to bring the wider critical edtech community together. I arrived in Zurich the afternoon before the conference, and fortunately for me, the affordable old town hotel that I booked was just a short walk away from the Cabaret Voltatire. As a young student, I had discovered the Dada movement through Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces in one of my English modules. In the book, he elegantly weaves together tales of 20th century rebellion through various artistic movements, mainly Dada and punk. Over the next next few days, I wondered if there was some parallel between the Dadists taking the stage in the Cabaret Voltaire in the summer of 1916 to subvert societal conventions that glorified war, and the convergence of critical edtech scholars over one hundred years later to share research and insights against a new backdrop of global polycrisis. Or, perhaps I was reaching to find parallels…

Landed in Zurich today for the European Conference on Critical EdTech Studies and managed to fulfil of my teenage dreams – visiting the birthplace of Dadaism at Cabaret Voltaire. I spent a few hours looking at the exhibits, reading in the Dada Library, and immersing myself in the space. #ECCES

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— Kate Molloy (@kate-molloy.net) June 17, 2025 at 8:57 PM

However, I was reassured that my thinking wasn’t too far off after finding at least one other delegate who drew a comparison to the storied first Sex Pistols gig:

The three days were intense, and the programme was packed. It was a delight to have the opportunity to meet some scholars that I admire like Petar Jandrić, Sarah Hayes, Janja Komljenovic, and Luci Pangrazio. I was also pleased to find that I was presenting in the same session as Markus Deimann, who I had crossed paths with at my learning design workshop in Digital Pedagogy Lab some years before. In fact, in my own quiet reflections on the conference, I revisited his The dark side of the MOOC – A critical inquiry on their claims and realities paper with fresh eyes as I consider the methodology for my review paper.

I also had the pleasure of meeting some new folks that I hope will remain part of my wider PLN for years to come, including Janine Arantes (Victoria University, Melbourne), Lyndsay Grant (University of Bristol), Jennifer Feldman (Stellenbosch University), and Svenja Bedenlier (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg). Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the conference beyond its rich programme was its overall vibe. As an early career researcher, I found it incredibly welcoming and supportive. For a ‘critical’ conference, I witnessed an encouraging, collegiate community of peers. The social programme did help a great deal. It’s not often that one swims in Lake Zurich after a barbecue at a Swiss castle or has access to mojitos on tap during post-conference canapés. Felicitas Macgilchrist’s keynote on the final morning, Critical Edtech Studies: What are we doing and where are we going? was another highlight. While I’ve been in the critical space for some time, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone examine the movement’s trajectory and future with that depth.

I was in Zurich last week for the first European Conference on Critical Edtech Studies. I was fortunate to present on some early PhD work, make new connections, and enjoy the city and surrounds. Sincere thanks to the organisers for hosting, and for bringing this valuable community together. #ECCES

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— Kate Molloy (@kate-molloy.net) June 22, 2025 at 2:23 PM

I was home in Ireland for just two nights before I headed back to the airport to head to OER 25 in London with Sharon Flynn. I was running a new workshop that Clare Thomson and I developed, ‘Fighting the good fight: Go rogue or go home’. Sharon was facilitating a workshop reviewing ALT’s Framework for Ethical Learning Technology without co-author Natalie Lafferty, so Javiera Atenas and I stepped in to assist. Sadly, I didn’t have much left in my battery for a social programme, so I had an early night while the GO-GN cohort went to dinner. I had hoped to sneak away to the Kurt Cobain Unplugged exhibit as well, but that didn’t materialise, sadly.

Managed to make it one piece to #OER25 in London this week. I was on hand to deliver a workshop developed with @slowtech2000.bsky.social and assist with workshop on @altuk.bsky.social Framework for Ethical Learning Technology. Workshop materials: bit.ly/GoRogueOER25

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— Kate Molloy (@kate-molloy.net) June 28, 2025 at 2:15 PM

I revised our ‘Go Rogue’ workshop for the next two conferences, the Civics of Technology conference, and OER Revisited, which were both online. The CoT conference is a must attend given its accessibility and the work that their community is facilitating more widely. Do sign up for their newsletter, at the very least. The ‘Revisited’ OER/ALT conference are also serving to create a more accessible conference space in moving online with significantly reduced rates. This the the current version of our workshop:

Finally, we’re on to the 2025 ALT conference in Glasgow, which was the point of this blog post in the first place and a shining example of how easily sidetracked that I get. Matt Cornock blogged some timely updates from the conference (day one, day two), and I was pleased to see his reflections on our presentation. I realised that having Clare there to present with provides an audience with so much more insight into our work than I can ever articulate on my own.

Gabi Witthaus delivered a moving, in-depth keynote on critically examining our learning design practices. It was a treat to share a drink with Joe Wilson, and dinner with Gabi before flying home. I also had the pleasure of meeting Natalie Lafferty in person for the first time. We sat together through a variety of workshops on the second day, and while I’m over-simplifying so I can finish this post, I came away realising that I am not alone in my bewilderment on the current edtech landscape. As a field, we remain fixated on endless digital innovation and transformation and a continuous need to reinvent the wheel with often little acknowledgement of past work or existing resources. There is so much work to build upon — we could save so much in terms of resources if we could restrain our drive for endless progress and innovation.

It was useful to take some time to participate in the ALT Strategy 2025-30 session as the community plans ahead for changing times. Speaking to Susan Martin and Keith Smyth about ALT more broadly drove home the importance of learning communities and how they shape us, and how the ALT community can self-sustain.

Our slides are from the session are available below, and a commentary paper on this topic is hopefully on its way soon.

As mentioned previously, I’ll be co-chairing the ILTA EdTech conference in 2026 with Rob Lowney (DCU). The 2026 conference, ‘EdTech You: Digital Learning From How to Who’, also marks the 25th anniversary of ILTA conference. Having hosted previous events on the St. Patrick’s campus in DCU, it feels a bit like a home coming for both of us. The call for proposals is now open, and we’re looking forward to seeing you in Dublin next June.

As I attempt to move playlists from Spotify to another platform (I’m open to suggestions), here is a YouTube version of my overall 2025 playlist, edited for travel to ALT-C. It’s a bit Glasgow heavy in parts given that I finally got to see The Vaselines over the summer.

Part of me has hesitated to post this as it doesn’t do justice to all of the presenters, speakers, and good people I’ve met and learned from along the way this year. In an uncertain world, the networks and communities that I contribute to and participate in help sustain me, even if I don’t do shout outs too often. It is within these communities that we grow and thrive, and I’m so appreciative that I spent my time this year in good company. The time, resources, and environmental impact of travel to conferences shouldn’t be taken for granted. Adding papers and presentations to the larger list is well and good, but it’s the active participation in these communities where the true value remains.

The featured image on this post is by Andrius Banelis and is licensed under a Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC-BY-NC-SA). 

In this participatory session, we will invite participants to examine each of the six emergent strategy elements, addressing and identifying practical solutions for each. We propose to develop a collection of crowd-sourced educator activities for a collaborative OER, modelling the intersections of open education, creative pedagogies, and learning design.

(Molloy and Thomson, 2024)

We chose a world café style and used markers and tablecloths to capture thoughts and themes throughout the sessions based on the issues facing the digital university, framed through the elements of emergent strategy. You can explore the workshop structure using our slides.

We collected the tablecloths and did our best to flatten and edit them to create a short zine based on the outcomes of the session. The workshop had a wide variety of international participants from Finland, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Netherlands. Even with minor differences in organisational context, many of the issues and themes addressed were similar.

The OER is now curated as a zine: Humanising Learning Design with Digital Pragmatism OER24 Workshop Resource – PDF Version – National Teaching Repository

The result of this is exhaustion, lack of care, increased loads and in some cases increased dropout rates and career breaks by staff and students, disproportionately affecting women and minority groups (Mavin and Yusupova, 2020; Femedtech, 2020). On top of that many are experiencing, what is now commonly referred to as Zoom fatigue, significantly impacting on our wellbeing (Caines, 2020).

The Manifesto for Teaching Online (Bayne et al, 2020) challenges us to rethink teaching in digital spaces: “Contact works in multiple ways. Face-time is over-valued.”. Yet the reality of pandemic-driven online learning has surfaced deep-held beliefs, with many educators replicating online classes in digital platforms and students seeking out visual connections with their class. This workshop will afford participants the opportunity to escape into the fresh air to explore how technology and open education practice could potentially untether us from our screens.

Clare Thomson and I will be taking ‘active’ very seriously in this workshop and encourage you to get up and away from your laptop and desk. If possible get out of the house for an hour and join us on a Twalk (Middleton and Spiers, 2019), which is essentially a Twitter walk with a series of questions. We will be releasing 6 questions on Thursday 22nd April at 11.10 BST to 12.10 BST. However, for anyone who can’t make it please do continue and add to the chat over the day – all posts will be collated into a Wakelet after the end of the conference. We will be using the conference hashtags, #OER21 #OERxDomains21 along with #untether. See you all on Twitter.

References

Bayne, S., Evans, P., Ewins, R., Knox, J., Lamb, J., Macleod, H., O’Shea, C., Ross, J., Sheail, P., Sinclair, C., 2020. The manifesto for teaching online. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Caines, A., 2020. The Zoom Gaze. Real Life, [online] Available at: https://reallifemag.com/the-zoom-gaze/ 

Femedtech, 2020. Open Letter To Editors/Editorial Boards. Available at: https://femedtech.net/published/open-letter-to-editors-editorial-boards/ 

Mavin, S., Yusupova, M., 2020. Gendered experiences of leading and managing through COVID-19: patriarchy and precarity. Gend. Manag. Int. J. 35, 737–744. https://doi.org/10.1108/GM-09-2020-0274 

Middleton, A., Spiers, A., 2019. 20. Learning to Twalk: An Analysis of a New Learning Environment, in: Rowell, C. (Ed.), Social Media in Higher Education. Open Book Publishers, pp. 223–236. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0162.20 

Back in 2019, I began experimenting with H5P, and was keen to integrate it with Blackboard at NUI Galway as a means to ‘open the closed’. You can read a little more about my thought process in my OER 19 abstract and a previous blog post. After a brief pilot in the 2019/2020 academic year as part of the Enhancing Digital Teaching and Learning project focusing on digital resources and interactive multimedia, we purchased a site license in August 2020, which provided our staff with a tool to remix their existing learning materials into asynchronous online content. I delivered a series of learning design workshops throughout that summer, and drew upon resources and concepts curated with project colleagues on the EDTL Approach ‘Consider Content and Activities‘.

Karen worked extensively throughout that period to create virtual fieldwork opportunities for her students, and was one of the early recipients of our Getting Started with Personal and Professional Digital Capacity badge. Her work eventually resulted in her successful application for the Erasmus+ project, Digilego, on which I’m a collaborator. Digilego aims to provide high quality easily transferable open educational resources for digital methods training in geography and environmental sciences at higher education institutions.

This past week, the Digilego team travelled to the Burren Sanctuary in Kinvara to host a virtual field trip course development workshop, with a final day at NUI Galway on Friday for a project meeting. The Burren Sanctuary is well-worth a visit even for those outside the academic discipline. I may have been distracted by the winding paths and resident animals…Thanks very much to Mary for hosting us.

Knowing that I’d be working with participants from a variety of institutions in my H5P workshop, I opted to use LUMI to create interactive videos using the footage they had already filmed and edited using Blender under Karen’s guidance. I worked with participants in smaller groups to discuss sharing options, from simply sharing .h5p files, uploading SCORM to a VLE, or publishing HTML files to a website.

This work will truly be an iterative process as media is created through the project’s travels, the next being a workshop in Berlin in August. Project members will continue to experiment with H5P and the various content types. We’ll discuss publishing and Creative Commons licensing in due course. I’ll be adding to the workshop resources over time, and my slides are also available.

Reimagining the Role of Learning Designers: Exploring Professional Identity and Postdigital Paradigms through Critical and Creative Methodologies

As a new PhD researcher and long-time practitioner, I have recently set out to examine the professional identity of Irish learning designers, leveraging creative and critical research methodologies that have stemmed from my professional and academic practice. This research will be submitted as a PhD by publication. The first paper, a short commentary, will explore ongoing research into the professional identity of learning designers in the third space. Drawing on a previously tested, open practice-oriented workshops developed from a recent book chapter (Molloy & Thomson, 2023, 2024, 2025), we will explore how a third space practitioner might adapt practice-based methods into their research design, equipping early career researchers with the agency to develop a unique approach to third space research. 

The next paper, a systematic review, will examine the professional identity of learning designers using critical discourse analysis, and how that process could create more equitable, co-designed visions for the future. Learning designers often exist in liminal spaces between academic and professional services in higher education, which can blur and undermine their status within the institution. This can be further compounded by the “disembodied skills-based constructions of learning designers” in job descriptions (Costello et. al., 2022, p. 460). Research and publication duties are most often related to the research of technology enhanced learning relevant to daily practice, not professional identity. This proposed methodology will analyse the roles of authors, revealing any presence of power imbalances in the literature and provide useful insights into representational gaps. It has been accepted for the inaugural European Conference on Critical Edtech Studies conference in Zurich, where I hope to seek feedback from colleagues. 

References

Costello, E., Welsh, S., Girme, P., Concannon, F., Farrelly, T., & Thompson, C. (2023). Who cares about learning design? Near future superheroes and villains of an educational ethics of care. Learning, Media and Technology, 48(3), 460–475. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2022.2074452

Molloy, K., & Thomson, C. (2023). Humanising learning design with digital pragmatism. In Czerniewicz, L., & Cronin, C. (Eds.), Higher education for good (1st ed., pp. 397–420). Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0363.17 

Molloy, K., & Thomson, C. (2024). Humanising learning design with digital pragmatism. OER24 Conference. Association for Learning Technology. https://blokks.co/schedules/oer24/#/2024-03-28/qmv8976e62ga/workshop-122-humanising-learning-design-with-digital-pragmatism 

Molloy, K., & Thomson, C. (2025). Embedding sustainability literacies in postdigital learning design. Education after the algorithm: Co-designing critical and creative Futures. Dublin City University. https://www.conftool.org/eaa2025/index.php?page=browseSessions&path=adminSessions&print=embed&form_session=3

Given that I am currently immersed in the research and creation of a course for learning/instructional designers, I created an OER aimed at that audience that practically introduces degrowth in postdigital learning design through reflection on current practice. I specifically enrolled in the Digital Futures course because of the OER assignment as I knew that it would be relevant to my work, and I hope to use and reuse elements of this resource over time.

The three-hour, interactive course is available to access online. You can download the SCORM and text files for local use on the National Teaching Repository. If you would like a copy shared with you via Articulate Rise please feel free reach out to me.

Course image “Tech that Grows” by Dheeraj Nanduri for ArtistsForClimate.org. Licensed under Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC-BY-NC-SA). 

Update (2nd August, 2024): Here are my slides outlining this work from the 2024 Civics of Technology Project online conference

I’m proud of what I’ve achieved in the five years, and so grateful for the stability and possibilities I’ve been afforded. But today isn’t the day to discuss it…

I began my teaching career in an inner city high school in the United States. As I watch current events unfold there, I find myself thinking about my former students. I was twenty-two years old when I started work, I was only a few years older than some of my students. The two years I spent teaching there shaped my entire career.

I could write a series of posts about the injustices I saw my students face, but for today, I’ll share one story. One morning, I noticed one of my seniors rubbing his wrists. He was a tall, athletic black man. He was a friendly guy, but that morning he looked down. He was a star athlete, so I assumed the injury was sustained during practice. I asked him what happened, and he put his head down, avoiding eye contact. He was shy, so I didn’t want to press him. His more outgoing friend elbowed him and urged him to tell me. After all, I was the nice teacher, and. I wasn’t going to judge.

He pulled up the sleeves of his hoodie to display large, circular bruises on each wrist. He sighed, and softly admitted. that he’d been held by the police the night before. He seemed ashamed. I didn’t care. He was a lovely kid and I had no misconceptions about his character.

And then he explained how ‘things’ worked. The police had been on the lookout for a young black man, six feet tall, wearing a black hoodie. I understood immediately how many young men that the description could apply to. He explained that he was handcuffed behind his back and. made to sit on the kerb while the police ran his information.

As he grew more comfortable talking about it, he explained how painful it is to be handcuffed from behind, and being made to sit on a low street kerb for some time is when you are well over six feet tall. It was, in fact, excruciating.

He hadn’t done anything wrong, he was let go, but he was injured. He was my student, he was hurt, and I didn’t like it. He was held because of what he looked like. It could have jeapordised his athletic career.

This wasn’t the most extreme thing I ever witnessed by any means, but the moment, in its nuances, sticks with me. I learned to approach my students with kindness, as we can’t always know what’s going on for them outside of school. I also learned that a young black man walking home from school isn’t always guaranteed to get home undisturbed. He was lucky…too many young black men don’t make it home.

So, instead of reflecting on five years of work today, I’m reflecting on fifteen. Fifteen years ago those students and I were rallying against racism and injustice, and somehow we’re still at this point. Today, and every day, black lives matter.

I was really proud of the programme. I had convinced the executive to enlist Bryan Mathers to create some Visual Thinkery for CESI, and he also agreed to be our capstone speaker. Cornelia Connolly, a colleague from NUI Galway and CESI executive member, had agreed to keynote. I was content that our guest speakers would be critical, thoughtful, and creative as we assessed the conference theme, ‘Our Evolving Learning Landscape’. Sure, I’m a bit heavy-handed with the alliteration, but given that Leaving Cert Computer Science is set to be examined for the first time in 2020, and computing is now ubiquitous across the Irish curriculum, I thought it was fitting.

The rich conference programme provided attendees with six streams to choose from on the day, along with great talks and panel sessions. In particular, Bryan’s capstone stood out as he drew live while the audience participated. He had produced these two images for our conference, one posing questions, and one providing answers.

I loved the imagery. I had enlisted Bryan to work with us not only because I’m a fan, but because I thought he could capture the rich nature of CESI’s work. CESI is a voluntary, grassroots organisation that prides itself on community, support, and fun. I wanted Bryan to illustrate the work, people, and joy that CESI serves to create.

He ended his capstone talk with a blank version of that image on his iPad, and he asked the audience what they thought was part of the evolving learning landscape. This is what emerged.

As the organiser, I barely had time to reflect on the conference before all schools and colleges in Ireland closed. I had taken a little time to rest, reconnect with friends, and get organised again, but it all seemed to happen so quickly. What stuck out as I did try to get my head around things, was the ‘What’s coming?’ at the centre of the image. On the day of the conference, I’m sure the context around this statement drew more from policy, innovations, research, or even trends. Now it just seems ominous.

We’re all adapting to the new normal. Moving to learn online, as we all know, it not easy and it is not a quick fix for more pressing issues such as health and access. So many educators are putting in time and effort into helping others, and critically pointing out issues around ed tech ethics and access. Indeed, part of what was to come is the wave of innate generosity of so many educators willing to help and support each other through a very new landscape.

During the conference, I chaired a panel discussion inspired by another of Bryan’s images, Open Asynchronous Professional Development.

This image had arisen from a discussion on CESI’s active mailing list, where a few thousand educators across Ireland communicate and collaborate asynchronously to offer advice, support, and encouragement. I was delighted to secure Rebecca O’Neill (Wikimedia Ireland), Catherine Cronin (National Forum), Mags Amond (PhD Researcher and CESI ambassador), and Pat Seaver (CESI Executive) for the session.

Again, I hadn’t had much time to reflect on the session before our schools and colleges closed. By the time I revisited it, I could only wonder how the conversation might have differed two weeks later? In such a short time, open asynchronous professional development was what so many educators were seeking. The CESI list, for anyone that follows it, is a hotbed of activity right now and has proven itself as a top-notch resource.

On Twitter, the hashtag #edShareIE has started to gain momentum, and from that our panelist, Mags Amond, reached out to Bryan Mathers to create this stunning remix of the original image. I’ll let her explain her thinking about this, but I was heartened to see some positivity emerging from our work in these dark times.

The sun continues to shine, the flowers are growing, and educators are helping each other. A month ago, not many in attendance would have thought we would be adding a ‘global pandemic’ or ‘fully online teaching’ to that list of what was to come, but here we are, and there are so many other areas to focus on as educators, many of which came up at the conference. We have opportunities, risks to take, and ethics to uphold. We have our local and global communities. Most importantly, we still have hope, love, and connections, even from afar.

With enduring thanks to Amy – For reminding me how much I loved teaching, and being an ever-present reminder that care is at the heart of what we do.

I’m not a fan of the holidays. I don’t enjoy the period of seemingly forced reflection. But, as a new decade dawns, I’m indeed finding myself in a state of forced reflection. This time around, it’s given me some new insight.

I started work as a Learning Technologist at NUI Galway nearly five years ago, but my career has been varied. I moved home to Ireland in 2007, and soon after, the job market had all but dried up, and I was in trouble. Having been a secondary school teacher in Connecticut for a few years after college, I had some decent experience and postgraduate qualifications, but I had hit a dry spell.

In December 2009, I had just spent an entire semester unemployed. Right before Christmas, I got a phone call from my old primary school. They were looking for a substitute special needs assistant for a maternity leave cover.

I was ecstatic. It meant a noticeable pay cut, and it was not a much-coveted teaching position, but it meant that I could earn just enough to get by for a while. It meant that I could actively look for a teaching position and there would be no hard feelings if I left before the contract ended.

I was grateful to be able to make a contribution to education again and to make a living wage. So, in January 2010 I became the substitute SNA at my old primary school. I had left that same school at only eleven years of age completing fifth and sixth class at the same time, but I was humbled to return.

I would have two more lengthy stints of unemployment throughout the decade and spend two more school years where I was barely employed. I would finish the substitute SNA position and spend the following year out of work. Periods like that are hard to recover from. It takes an emotional toll. It takes a financial toll. And it’s particularly hard when you really love teaching. There’s nothing more painful than wanting to get out there to make a difference, and simply not being allowed to.

It also served to remind me that working in education is not a right, but a true privilege. I was humbled to undertake any work that I could, and I also found myself reeling many times throughout the years when I would hear colleagues complain. When you’re in a position of precarity for so many years, it can be extremely difficult to remain anything other than grateful and enthused. I’ve rarely had the privilege of being secure enough to challenge things.

The decade changed dramatically for me in the 2011/12 school year. I had returned from a visit to the States to the sad realisation that I was about to enter my second year of unemployment. That was until I received a phone call from a local principal asking me to interview for a full-time position that ticked all the boxes. I had snagged a full-time contract teaching at St. Joseph’s College, Summherhill for a full year. This meant I would get paid in the summer as well, which I hadn’t been for many years.

I had spent so long waiting for a break to come that I made one promise to myself; I would just get on with the job. I would take some time to breathe and enjoy job security. This was to be my time, and I would be selfish and enjoy it. I promised myself that I wouldn’t get too wrapped up in things, or care too much.

That lasted for a couple of weeks. What I didn’t realise was that the higher level 6th year class I was taking on had lost their teacher to breast cancer the previous year. The grief in the air was palpable, and they were well behind where they needed to be. I walked into a classroom piled high with the late Joan O’Brien’s belongings and her memorial card perched on the shelf above my computer.

I played the strict, demanding teacher for a few weeks, but that’s not who I am. In some schools, that level of control and rigour is rewarded, and I needed a permanent job. Fortunately, that’s not how things worked in Summerhill. As I got to know my students, especially my sixth years, I couldn’t maintain the facade.

I’ve always been the nice teacher. I’ve always been an advocate, and my students’ greatest champion. I’m passionate about what I do. I could march up and down the room ranting about my favourite plays or poets for hours on end. I’m the disheveled teacher – the one that accidentally wears two different shoes to work. I’m the one that will laugh at myself, and fully admit my imperfections. After all, we’re all human, and we’re all in this together.

Who I really was as a teacher was in stark contrast to the never-ending job hunt that I’d spent so many years meandering through. The job hunt makes you laser-focused, you develop tunnel vision, and it makes you inherently selfish. I spent so long talking about ‘the job’ that it became my white whale. The year that unfolded in Summerhill reminded me that getting the job was not my white whale, finding my sense of purpose was.

The year I spent in Summerhill was chaotic and joyous. I would do it again and again if I could. The sixth years had so much to cover at such a critical time. They should have been nearly finished the senior cycle curriculum but had only made a dent. I spent the entire year on edge. We worked hours a day after school. We never stopped.

When I look back at that time, I’m reminded of everything I love about teaching. It was messy and chaotic. It was equal parts painful and triumphant. It was joyous and at times, so sad. Education, after all, is about people. Every person in a classroom brings their own unique experience, and it is what we do in that moment that makes a difference. It is in those relationships that we learn, build trust, and grow. And the teacher grows, too. Hell, that year, I was the one that grew most of all.

The 2011/12 school year was pivotal for me in so many ways. I also attended my first CESI conference. For a long time, I had experimented with technology in the classroom. It was one constant when you are forced to move from job to job, across sectors and subjects. I talked a bit about this on Gettin’ Air with Terry Greene recently.

When I walked into the 2012 conference, I knew I had found my people. I had barely attended any CPD since moving home, but here I found over two hundred teachers spending a weekend focusing on CPD. After that, I never missed a conference. I paid my way each year, even when I didn’t have the money. I knew the experience was invaluable. CESI is unique in that it is cross-sectoral. That network helped me become a Learning Technologist. Now, I find myself Secretary of the National Executive, and conference organiser for the past two years.

I have been reminded recently that my go-to catchphrase throughout the 2011/12 year was, ‘I remain cautiously optimistic’. I had to keep repeating it as we powered through a dense curriculum at warp speed when we should have been revising and practicing for the exam. To be honest, I didn’t really know if I could get it done, but I was willing to run myself into the ground trying. I still stand by the idea of cautious optimism. After all, what else do we have?

My Thursday was downright ridiculous. I would drive from my home in Athlone to Mountbellew to teach for two hours. I would use my lunch to travel to Athenry to teach one forty-minute class period. From there, I would drive home and stop for a little while before heading out to a night class in Banagher. This is what my drive looked like.

I had nearly forgotten about this until a Facebook memory popped up a little while ago. I had posted this picture of my cozy sitting room one gloomy November evening as I headed out to my third school of the day.

It would have been fine if I had been able to live on the wages I was making at all, but I wasn’t getting by. I was tired.

I taught what was to be my last class in April 2015 in Athenry. At the end of the day, on a Friday before the Easter holidays, my sixth years stood up and gave me a standing ovation when the bell rang. Of course, this reduced me to a puddle of tears, and many gifts and hugs were exchanged. I had left many positions before, but this time it felt final. I had no idea what was to happen next, but I felt that change was coming.

I was petrified that I would not find work until September, and all signs seemed likely that I wouldn’t However, in the summer of 2015, I applied for a post as a Learning Technologist at NUI Galway for a three month period. Little did I know I would be kept on in the same role for nearly five years now. In all my working years, I have never been so secure, but I’m still not permanently full time.

In 2017, Summerhill merged with St. Aloysius College to become Coláiste Chiaráin. The first years I had taught were graduating that year, and I was invited along. I had never noticed the meaning of the school’s motto. Seeing the decorations reading, ‘Through Kindness and Effort’ reduced me to tears. It all seemed so fitting. My favourite year — the year that reminded me of all the inherent messiness and joy of teaching, was all about kindness and effort. I loved it – nowhere was there any mention of ‘excellence’ or ‘rigour’. The message was so simple, and just so lovely.

My work will always be anchored upon these experiences. I will soldier on cautiously optimistic. I approach education with a view to be kind, and to make my best effort.

The last ten years were tough. The lean periods were much too long. The happy periods were much too short. The years settling in at NUI Galway have been rife with unease as I try to learn to settle in. It’s hard to take that deep breath when you’ve spent so long being uneasy and unsure.

Sometimes that unease plays out in front of the classroom. At Summerhill, the sixth years were due to read ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’. I have always been an avid Brian Friel fan, and it was hard to avoid the passages that mirrored our mutually desperate situations. Room 12 often felt like Ballybeg, and I felt like my counterpart, Kate, the school teacher trying to hold it all together. At one point, Kate laments:

KATE. You work hard at your job. You try to keep the

home together. You perform your duties as best you can –

because you believe in responsibilities and obligations and

good order. And then suddenly, suddenly you realize that hair

cracks are appearing everywhere; that control is slipping away;

that the whole thing is so fragile that it can’t be held together

much longer. It’s all about to collapse, Maggie.

Every time I read this aloud and discussed Kate’s role as the matriarch, and the transitional time that the Mundy family, and indeed rural Ireland, was experiencing, I felt a chill and a stark reminder that fiction had become reality. I had no idea if everything I was trying to control was all about to crack, but I was trying my best. I still have that dogeared copy of the play close to hand – I always know where to find it.

Friel writes about memory so elegantly, and in ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’, he ends the play with the most beautiful narration:

And so, when I cast my mind back to that summer of 1936,

different kinds of memories offer themselves to me.

But there is one memory of that Lughnasa time that visits

me most often; and what fascinates me about that memory

is that is owes nothing to fact. In that memory atmosphere is

more real than incident and everything is simultaneously

actual and illusory. I that memory, too, the air is nostalgic with

the music of the thirties. It drifts in from somewhere far away

— a mirage of sound – a dream music that is both heard

and imagined; that seems to be both itself and its own echo;

a sound so alluring and so mesmeric that the afternoon is

bewitched, maybe haunted, by it. And what is so strange about

that memory is that everybody seems to be floating on those

sweet sounds, moving rhythmically, languorously, in complete

isolation; responding more to the mood of the music than to

its beat. When I remember it, I think of it as dancing. Dancing

with eyes half closed because to open them would break the spell.

Dancing as if language had surrendered to movement

— as if this ritual, this wordless ceremony, was now the

way to speak, to whisper private and sacred things, to be in

touch with some otherness. Dancing as if the very heart of life

and all its hopes might be found in those assuaging notes and

those hushed rhythms and in those silent and hypnotic movements.

Dancing as if language no longer existed because

words were no longer necessary …

In 2012, the music was not from the Marconi, but from the iPod. This time around, it was an American punk rock band that provided the soundtrack that will forever entwine music and memory.

While this post is obviously focusing on my professional self, and not the personal, I find the personal and professional hopelessly intertwined at times. In particular, the Summerhill year was an emotional one. That year, I discovered a band called The Menzingers and their seminal album, ‘On the Impossible Past’. I loved the literary allusions, the chaotic melodies, the bombastic sing-alongs, and everything in between. I listened to it on repeat. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the band became my Artist of the Decade. Everything about that album evokes memories from that year. Every song evokes a ‘memory atmosphere’.

For posterity, here are some playlists.

As the decade comes to a close, they have released another record, ‘Hello Exile’, and it has more than met my emotional and sonic expectations. It’s only fitting that many of the songs have formed my soundtrack to round off a tumultuous ten years.

Closing this post is difficult, as it was meant to cover so many things. The past decade defined who I was as an educator. I am forever grateful to the students of Room 12. I am forever grateful to Sharon and Iain and the CELT team at NUI Galway. I am grateful that I somehow found the strength the soldier on, cautiously optimistic. Most importantly, I am thankful to Amy, and hopefully, she knows why.