Retiring teachers look back with pride on 40 years at iconic Tullamore school

AN era very much came to an end in life at one of Offaly's great schools with the simultaneous retirement of its two longest serving teachers.

Ray O'Donovan, a proud native of Clonakilty in West Cork, and Liam O hOistin, equally proud of his home roots in the Gaeltacht at Spiddal, Galway both arrived in the then Tullamore Christian Brothers School in the mid 1980s, both of them envisaging a short term job to get them up and running before they moved back down near home.

In those economically testing times, teaching jobs were hard to come by and both were thrilled to get their foot on the ladder when offered jobs by then Tullamore CBS principal Br Greg Murray.

As often happens in these situations, life took its own twists and turns, they met their wives in Tullamore, reared their family, set down roots and the town will remain home for them in their retirement.

Ray O'Donovan arrived first, coming in for the 1984/1985 school year with Liam O hOistin coming a year later – he likes to remind Liam that he was a year ahead of him in their time scale but a year behind him in age.

It was a very different era, the final transformation of the old teaching methods. The old educational trend of blackboard and chalk being accompanied by the rod was more or less gone, though there were remnants of it hanging around with some primary and secondary teachers. O' hOistin experienced some of that himself in his own school going years but by the time they started teaching in their early 20s, it was not only illegal but also socially unacceptable to use any violence with children.

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Tullamore CBS occupies a pivotal place in Tullamore. A boys only secondary school, it was ran by the Christian Brothers until becoming Colaiste Choilm in 1999, when the Christian Brothers handed over trusteeship to the Diocese of Meath.

It is now a lay school, albeit, retaining its Catholic tradition as well as fully facilitating many students from other backgrounds but for many of its past pupils, towns people and the wide spread of surrounding areas who used the school, it remains simply the “Brothers” - a term also used by some of its current students, no doubt influenced by their fathers, who were past pupils.

O hOistin got his teaching qualification through University College in Galway while O'Donovan went via Cork. Both arrived in Tullamore as young single men around the same time, became great friends and have retained that bond into retirement, now going on last minute trips together.

Both have vivid memories of their arrival into Tullamore – while very much a football man, who played senior football with Clonakilty, O'Donovan remembers his first day in school for one poignant reason: it was the day after Cork beat Offaly in the centenary All-Ireland senior hurling final in Thurles and needless to say, he was not shy about letting his first students know where he was from.

A chance meeting with Br Greg Murray in Dunmore House in West Cork led to O'Donovan coming to Tullamore – Christian Brothers used to spend their holidays there at that time and O'Donovan had done a bit of sub work, was committed to Clonakilty footballers as well as considering America as an option. When Br Murray suggested a post in Tullamore, he was not particularly interested, mainly for football reasons but his mother advised him to send in a CV and the “rest is history”.

He recalled: “I barely knew where Tullamore was and I said “I don't really want to go to Tullamore. Then eventually I said, Look, I’ll take it. A permanent, pensionable job at the time. Go for a year or two maybe, start moving back again but here I am 41 years later.”

O hOistin's story was similar as he recounted: “We were in mid '80s, fresh out of college, paying back college loans and fees. There wasn’t a lot of work going on. I remember printing my CVs on green paper because I got it for free and I couldn’t get white paper with the money because of college. My CV was on green paper and Brother Greg Murray rang me and he says “I have your CV here on green paper!”

“ There wasn’t a lot going on. You’d have taken a job anywhere you got it. I had sent out so many CVs that summer, I found it difficult to remember that I had sent one to Tullamore. When Brother Greg Murray rang me and said “I have your CV here” I said “Oh, really?” and he said “Yeah, you applied for a job we advertised. Will you come up for an interview?” Which I duly did the next morning. A couple of days after, I was offered the job. I took it because we had college loans and there was nothing else on the horizon at that time! I never imagined myself working in the Midlands. I kind of said “We’ll give it a shot and hopefully I’ll get back west at some stage. But I have to say, over the years I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the Midlands.”

A few years later, he met his wife Roisin Martin from O'Moore Street, getting married in 1993 and from then Tullamore became home, rather than a stop on the road to elsewhere.

Similarly, O'Donovan became settled from the minute he got married to Galway woman, Bernie Cahill in 1992 – she taught in Killina Presentation Secondary School and they took a year out to spend in Australia after meeting in the 1980s but always intended coming back to Ireland and Tullamore.

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Great Friends

The duo both taught Irish with O hOistin also teaching English and O'Donovan doing history – with fewer Irish teachers qualifying, O hOistin became a predominantly Irish teacher as the years went on. This helped them build up a really solid friendship with the Galway man helping his new friend get a summer job in a Gaeltacht school, Colaiste Lurgan, something he kept going for years.

O'Donovan smiled: “The year after I started, when Liam started, we’d have been very close together in our careers and as friends. Our families, our kids were of similar ages. Some of them were in school together, in the same classes and stuff like that so we have been very, very close.”

He talked with infectious enthusiasm about Colaiste Choilm and its role in Tullamore. Referring to comments by Offaly minor football manager, Roger Ryan after last year's Leinster final win over Louth when he said there was an “Offalyness” about the team, he claimed there is a “Colaiste Cholmness” about the school.”

This writer attended the Brothers from 1985 to 1990 and O'Donovan insisted: “The school had an aura from the very beginning; your time even, Tullamore CBS. It just had. You just get a feel for the place. You get a feeling for a job. A feeling for the people around you and the lads that were there. They were always, and still are, down to earth and solid individuals. You’re going to have your troubles with some lads who are everywhere but by and large they’re a fantastic group of lads. They love their sports be it football, hurling, soccer, basketball, everything. All the sports. As a school you want the academics as the number one but I think we cater for that. We have catered for that over the years and also catered very well for the extracurricular activities. So, that’s what kept me here I suppose. Establishing that in the first couple of years takes a while but then like it was just a very enjoyable place to work. You have your bad days but in general I never found it a chore, I never found it difficult, I was never saying “Oh God, I hate going into school.”

The two teachers have witnessed seismic changes during their long careers. One big one was the switch from a Christian Brothers run school to a lay one, Colaiste Choilm – After Br Greg Murray, the school had a succession of Brothers as principals, Brs O'Connor, McGovern and finally Br Duffy.

In an era when co-education schools are favoured by many, both see the advantages in single sex schools with O hOistin declaring:

“We’re leaning a lot towards co-education but education in single-sex schools does have its advantages as well. You have four, five, six, seven hundred boys in the one place but Coláiste Choilm really catered to almost everybody that came through that school in one way or another be it sport or academia or even things like music! Drama, whatever. The social scene in Ireland, lads have gone on to politics, lads have gone on to sport, lads have gone on to acting. It’s all there. Over the years, while the administration has changed, I don’t think the ethos has changed and I don’t think the boys have changed. I started teaching there over 41 years ago, the boys were the boys and they’re the same today. It’s like that film ‘Boys Town,’ there’s no such thing as a bad boy. I don’t think the lads have changed over 40 years.”

Teaching brothers were on the way out by the time the duo arrived but members still there in Tullamore included Brs Rossiter, Cashel, Hogan, O'Sullivan.

Br Hogan was one of those teachers who could struggle to control a big geography class but was a brilliant teacher and had a small honours history group eating out of his hand. O' hOistin remembers him and Br O'Sullivan fondly. “Both men were coming to the end of their careers too. Lovely men, so caring and dedicated to their jobs.”

Huge changes

O'Donovan talked about the huge changes that have taken place in the past 40 years plus.

“ I have found that there’s a lot of change that’s come about in the last five or six years in particular with the change in the curriculum and all of that. I think there’s more pressure on kids nowadays. Teachers put more pressure on them, the department are putting more pressure on teachers, parents have higher expectations and sometimes unrealistic expectations as well but look I’m not gonna get into criticising parents or anything like that. I suppose society has changed and a school is kind of a society in itself.

“I suppose the way society has changed over the years is reflected in any given school but what we have found, and Liam kind of referred to it there;  is that this ethos that’s there, the mission statement that refers to treating everyone as an individual and the values of respect and all that, they’re still the basic ones that are there. The physical buildings have changed an awful lot from your time there. The prefabs, the Banagher concrete made building with holes in them and the wind whistling through. Now you’ve got a state of the art school with another extension coming shortly as well.

“I’m glad to say that the Coláiste Choilm-ness has stayed and hopefully will stay. That is down to the staff, that is down to the management, that is down to the lads themselves because the way the staff carry themselves and do their work reflects on the boy]s.”

Some people become teachers because it is a financially rewarding pensionable career with loads of time off but are not particularly suited to the job and can't control classes. The two retired teachers had an obvious passion for teaching and class control was not an issue with them – though they did have to deal with the usual disruptive behaviour from boisterous young teens, just acting their age.

O hOistin said: “Sure it’s not something we didn’t do ourselves at school so I mean you kind of have to bend or you’ll break. Boys are boys. You always try to get the best out of them but sometimes there has to be a compromise. So if you have five or six classes a week, that you get four good classes and two mediocre classes, that's not a bad return. If lads are really trying hard then you want to reward them in some way, be it give them a free class or let them watch a video or maybe go for a game of soccer during one class a month or something just to let them blow off steam. That’s very important with boys. As a teacher over the years you will develop techniques like that in dealing with them. There's no doubt about it, there are boys who found school difficult and found it difficult to sit at times but you just try to compromise every way you could.”

O'Donovan agreed: “I’d often use the word, in any situation, ‘respect’. Meas, as Gaeilge. I think if you show respect as teacher to your students, by and large you’ll get that respect back from them as well. You have to get to know them also. I think it’s very important and I would advise any young teacher coming into the job, it’s not an easy job. Some people might say teaching is a doss, three months' holidays and you're finished at half three and whatever, but work hard at it and get to know your students.

“Get involved with them in any way be it sports or be it in choirs or drama or anything really. Just get down with them as such. I think if you show them the respect and the interest – that you’re genuinely interested in them and developing them as young men, as people; apart from the academics in your history, Irish, maths and so on. That's part of a teacher's job as well, developing them that way. I think the basic rule is that respect goes a long way.”

He talked about the difficulties students could be going through outside of school.

“From the start, we were involved with the lads outside class. Particularly in sports and other things as well. It certainly helped me, and I’m not speaking for Liam here, but I think it would have helped anybody to get to know the lads. You asked me about the biggest changes, society has changed an awful lot. There’s lads looking at you there in the morning and you’re looking for homework and so on. They might’ve spent the night before in the shed or they’re coming from abusive situations at home or whatever . There’s rules and rules that have to be there but you have to kind of bend the rules at times. It’s getting to know your students really. Not prying into their personal lives. I could give you examples of lots of lads where you just kind of get there with them and it’s just a moment, you can’t identify it but you’re like “Oh, I have him now.”

“This guy could be causing trouble, could be in trouble with the law or whatever downtown but next thing, because you’re there and you’ve shown him this kind of respect that maybe he’s never received before from his family or his so called friends. Suddenly, as a teacher, you’re showing interest in him and showing him this respect. It’s something that doesn’t work all the time but when it does work it’s very, very rewarding. I think any part of life, what you put into it you’ll get out of it so if you go in with the attitude of “ Oh God I have to get through this day now and then collect my wages at the end of the week” kind of thing, but not have a genuine interest, you’re in the wrong job.

O hOistin had the same passion and never had a moment where he had enough of teaching.

“ No. I have to say there wasn’t. Looking back over the years and meeting other teachers and teachers teaching in other schools. Maybe we were very lucky in Coláiste Choilm with the attitude of the whole school and the school ethos. The boys that came into our school were exceptional for the most part. As Irish teachers, sometimes Irish is looked at in a very negative light all around the country. Myself and Ray were very involved in trying to get boys to go to the Gaeltacht and to do a stint in Coláiste Lurgan – or in any Gaeltacht for that matter, that would kind of bring a positive attitude towards the language and towards our subject. I’m sure woodwork teachers would get lads doing a bit of work on sites or whatever, we tried to get kids going to the Gaeltacht. Every child that ever came back from the Gaeltacht to our school thoroughly enjoyed it and did very, very well in Gaeilge. So, you would kind of get involved with stuff like that.

“The same with sport. If a guy was having difficulty in school, maybe sport was his outlet and you would encourage that with him. In today's terms it could be music, it could be drama, it could be other practical stuff as well. We were both Irish teachers so the Gaeltacht was a great way for us to encourage the lads to learn Irish. There was more to it than just what we did in class. There was other stuff out there, having great fun and a great holiday in Connemara for three weeks was a great way to encourage the language as well. You develop all this sort of stuff. Over the years you just encourage and work hard to get the lads to get the best out of themselves.”

O'Donovan: “Over the years Liam had an amazing way with lads who would be, say, troublesome. The lads who were not interested, sometimes not capable and didn’t have the background of getting 625 points in the Leaving Cert or anything like that. Liam had this way about him more than anyone I’ve ever met in my career that he could relate unbelievably well to these lads. He saw that this guy who couldn’t put two words of Irish together but could put chairs out in a straight line. Liam used to see that and organise that. He got the lads to believe that this was their mission in school, that they were setting up this and that was an important job. And it was an important job! It was fantastic for them. I have to say Liam was particularly good at that.”

Sometimes, the teachers showed a bit of their own personal lives and backgrounds in the stuff they talked about with their classes. A lifelong non drinker, O hOistin often told classes about the downside and damage of excessive use of alcohol.

He admitted: “Sometimes you tell other people, say, I believe such and such a thing and in my opinion that’s wrong, that’s good, that’s bad, you’re not gonna keep those things secret from people you’re teaching. This is my opinion and your opinion is just as important. You don’t have to agree with my opinion but that’s the way I believe, what do you think?” You kind of encourage that way of thinking as well, y’know?”

He knew that messages such as alcohol use could either go over the head of or be downright rejected by young students, counting down the days to their first pint.

“ I don’t drink. I never drank. I think some of the lads found that hard to believe. Some days you’d be half cracked in school anyways. You have good days and bad days like that. Coláiste Choilm was very, very special because me and Ray were always teaching next door to each other. If there was a guy in the class who was having a particularly bad day and was giving a teacher a bad time I could say “Go out next door for the class”. Ray could say the same if there was some guy in his, which very few guys misbehaved in Ray's class. But that support was there.

“The lads needed those outlets as well, maybe to get away from a particular teacher for a while and just sit in a different class and see how things are done differently. All of these things, sport as well. Myself and Ray were very involved in sport and it was through the sport an awful lot that we got through to the boys. Our involvement in sport really helped with their involvement in school and education. Does that make sense?”

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GAA ethos in a sports mad school

Football is the big sport in Colaiste Choilm, there is also a strong hurling focus there and athletics, basketball and golf are all catered for. Other extracurricular activities are provided – O'Donovan ran a very successful India Immersion Project at the school for several years, bringing a group of students to impoverished areas bi-annually -, but its sporting identity and ethos is GAA: this has seen it attract in pupils from outlying areas who might drift elsewhere otherwise.

O hOistin was the manager when Colaiste Choilm had a famous win in the Leinster Colleges Senior “B” Football Championship in 1990 while O'Donovan has been instrumental in them competing in A level in all football grades in recent years, reaching a senior final a couple of years ago. A particular highlight for the duo was the win in the All-Ireland colleges senior “B” hurling in 2018 with a team that included future Offaly senior hurlers, Ciaran Burke, Ross Ravenhill and Brian Duignan and a county footballer Diarmuid Egan.

Another special moment was a Leinster senior “B” football title a couple of years later with a team that included such exceptional talents as Cormac Egan, John Furlong and Jack Bryant. This trio and Oisin Keenan-Martin were outstanding as Offaly won the All-Ireland U21 football title in 2021 and Colaiste Choilm is proud of the number of county footballers and hurlers who have gone through its doors.

Brian Duignan is now among the teaching staff in the school while Offaly football defensive stalwart David Dempsey and Cappincur footballer Ciaran Farrell are other past pupils teaching there. This has touched an emotional chord with the duo and with former Offaly hurler Colm Cassidy also there, the GAA is well served by teachers with a passionate interest in the games.

O'Donovan and O hOistin believe that sport is non negotiable in an all boys school, a legitimate means of allowing them to blow off steam.

They have seen Colaiste Choilm progress from crisis in the early 2000s when its numbers dipped close to 300 to the near 700 it has now. This has seen a lot of new staff and while less teachers are willing to give up hours outside of school for extracurricular stuff, O'Donovan strongly encourages them to follow his path.

“Getting involved like that outside the classroom certainly worked for me. . Again, there’s a lot of young teachers coming into our school there with the growth of numbers over the last couple of years and that’s the advice I would give. That’s the advice that I got from people like Murt Davoren and Seán Breathach as an Irish teacher and Leo Minnock and  all these teachers that were the old teachers when we started out. They passed their knowledge onto us and hopefully we’ve had some influence on the new teachers coming in.”

O h'Oistin concurred: “In an all boys school, I think sport is essential. It’s essential. It has to be the main extracurricular activity. Now there has to be other extracurricular stuff as well, and there is in Coláiste Choilm. The balance of stuff in Coláiste Choilm is actually fantastic. But there’s no doubt about it, the amount of sport in the school. Sport would be the main extracurricular.

“Sport and boys have to go hand in hand. It really doesn’t matter what sport they’re playing as long as they’re playing sport. It’s an outlet for them. It’s a physical outlet, a mental outlet, and it’s so important. I remember when I started teaching in Coláiste Choilm there was two classes at the end of the day on Tuesday dedicated to second years and all second years had games. We were up on the field where the new school is now and there’d be 120 young fellas running around after the one football and it was the best of craic and the worst of craic.”

“ Even for the lads who weren’t going to go make teams, they had an outlet and that was very important especially in a boys school. Now physical education has taken on a more focused I suppose- because they do the high jumping and the long jumping, javelin, shot putt, rounders all that sort of stuff. But still, team games play a huge important role and it’s so important that boys be associated with that sort of stuff. You meet past pupils now and it is always, do you remember this match or that match.”

O'Donovan: “Over the years we’ve developed a lot I suppose, Gaelic football and hurling in particular, and it's fantastic the soccer and the basketball and the athletics and the tennis and the golf every sort of sports are catered for. But as you say, it is primarily a GAA school. We like to think ourselves as the primary GAA school in Offaly but lads in Edenderry and Birr and places like that would argue with that but that’s good as well. It’s been a passion of mine all my life.”

Away from sport, both are traditional educators at heart. They have seen the change in technology with computers, laptops, tablets all becoming invaluable teaching aids but O hOistin is a real traditionalist – he salutes the benefits of all these but still likes the old blackboard and chalk, teaching out of a book and challenging students to learn their subjects.

“When I started teaching, it was chalk and talk,” he smiled. “When these came out first there was one laptop and one overhead projector that used to be wheeled around from class to class. It was minded like the crown jewels and now they are in every class. Technology has changed. Personally I don't think it is for the better. When a child has to go to a library, open up a book, take the information from the book, make a note about what he has just read, there is more of a learning benefit. When a child opens up a screen and reads it, he moves on. Learning is a direct experience.”

Having finished at the end of the 2024-2025 school year, they are still adapting to retirement and looking forward to their formal retirement party this Friday. They have made a great contribution to life in the “Brothers” but it transcends the school as they have had a positive impact on so many people in a variety of ways.

As the years wear on, they will drift further away from the school but they will remain Colaiste Choilm men – O' hOistin's daughter Sorcha is teaching in the school, alongside Iarflaith Davoren, son of another retired teacher, Murt Davoren. O'Donovan is currently setting up a school alumni , making contact with past pupils to come on board and both will remain available to help the school in whatever role wanted.

“It is such an honour and privilege to say I was in the school,” said O hOistin while O'Donovan concluded: “I could have retired a couple of years ago but I felt I was still able to give something. I wasn't finding it a chore but I was ready now. There is a lot of change with the new Leaving Certificate, artificial intelligence and I felt it was the right time. I had given a lot and I was empty. I wasn't able to give the same enthusiasm physically and mentally and it is a young person's game now. I will miss it, I will miss the fun and the games, the company of the teachers. I am still quite friendly with them all. 200 people have signed up for the alumni and that keeps my hand in the school. I have nothing but positive memories and you don't just leave but I am happy, I am not going to go back.”