Teachers Themselves

Looking through a Different Lens: Mary McKenna on Autism Education

• Dublin West Education Centre • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Are you interested in Autism Education and seeking guidance on how to approach the subject with sensitivity, respect, and accurate terminology? Allow us to introduce you to Mary McKenna, a seasoned primary teacher and CPD facilitator, who pioneered the first Autism early intervention class in Ireland. 

In this episode of ‘Teachers Themselves’, Mary provides a thoughtful examination of the labels often used to describe neurodivergent individuals and classrooms, challenging us to move beyond phrases like "disorder" and "unit". Mary's journey from primary school teacher to CPD facilitator is a fascinating one, instigated by an invitation to be part of a significant research study. 

Join us as we explore the importance of shared understanding in education and the power of peer support.

Whether you're about to start teaching in an autism support class or are a seasoned educator looking for fresh insights, this conversation has something for you. And as we wrap things up, Mary reminds us of an essential aspect often overlooked: the necessity of self-care for teachers. Join us and learn how to sustain your role without losing yourself in the process.

In this episode, Mary also provides her top 3 CPD tips for the academic year ahead. You can listen to her recommendations in a bite-size, separate bonus episode. 

Mary’s CPD recommendations for the year ahead are; to attend her CPD with DWEC, to consider the CPD available through the NCSE and for CPD for your own Wellbeing. You can book her CPD recommendations here:

Mary McKenna’s CPD with DWEC = An Introduction to Teaching Autistic Children 
(Face-to-Face course starting on September 27th)

NCSE = https://ncse.ie/tpl 

Wellbeing = Restorative Practices Skills for Promoting Wellbeing in Classrooms and Schools
The Resilient Teacher: Approaches from Positive Psychology
A Whole-School Approach to Well-Being and SSE
Mood Matters. Wellbeing webinar for SNAs 

 

Don’t forget to like and subscribe, leave us a review and share it with colleagues and friends! Your feedback informs the show.

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If you have any thoughts on our episodes, or suggestions for future topics, email Zita at zrobinson@dwec.ie
Or take a minute to give us your feedback: Listener Feedback

Oh – and don’t forget to book that CPD – dwec.ie

Teachers Themselves is a DWEC original, produced and created by Dublin West Education Centre produced by Zita Robinson.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

I'm your host, Ultan Mac Mathúna. This podcast is brought to you by Dublin West Education Centre. We're located in the grounds of TU Tallaght, serving and supporting the school communities of West Dublin and beyond. In this podcast, I'll be speaking with some of the very talented, dedicated people who bring you your CPD Facilitators with a background in passion for education in Ireland. Educators whose commitment to students and colleagues shines through in their delivery of courses for Dublin West Ed Centre.

Mary McKenna:

I just love a bit of transformation and I'm not saying that anyone needs to be transformed. I love seeing and bringing in new perspectives and kind of expanding our understanding to align our teaching style with the learning style of the autistic children.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

My guest today is Mary McKenna. Mary is a primary teacher since she graduated in 1982. In 1999, Mary set up Ireland's first autism early intervention class. Throughout her career, Mary has also fulfilled roles as an early years autism consultant, a consultant and lecturer with special education needs programs in Irish universities, and she's been a lecturer and national autism team member for the National Council for Special Education, the NCSE, since 2010. Mary is also an experienced CPD facilitator, regularly delivering online and in-person courses in WM education centre and for the Marino Institute of Education. Her courses include teaching autistic children where to start, what to prioritise, how to thrive, and understanding autism, supporting the child and the teacher.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Now, there's a lot more strings to your bow, mary, which we will get to in the course of our chat, but just to, I suppose, start at the start, mary, and I think, to clarify a couple of things. For me, terminology is really important. So when we talk about autistic children, what's the correct phrase to use? When we're talking about a child with autism or an autistic child, what's the correct phrase or preferred phrase?

Mary McKenna:

Well, the preferred terminology is changing and when I was learning about autism with Birmingham University in the early 2000s, the correct and preferred term was a child with autism identity for a person first. But recently we're privileged to be able to hear from a lot of autistic adults and they're able to advocate for themselves now. So the ASD is kind of looked on as a bit out of date because that has the word disorder in it. A lot of autistic adults would like us to understand it as a neurological difference. Basically the most recent term would be autistic person. But what's really respectful? If you were dealing with someone who is neurodivergent, that you will say. What way would you like me to address him? So it's an individual preference. You just don't want to be naming and labelling somebody in the non-preferred language.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So we shouldn't be afraid to ask someone straight out what will you like me to refer to? I think so. Yeah, brilliant, and in the class could be an autism support class or an autism class.

Mary McKenna:

Yeah well, the department calls it a special class. I have found that with teachers that it helps us all to reframe our minds around support. So to be an autism support class seems to fit the bill for me. But autism class is fine. But what you really want to move away from and I don't think anyone can argue it is the big word called unit and a teacher I remember in a course and she said it to me and I realized, yes, that's what I've been getting at. She said it sounded to her like a psychiatric unit in a medical. So you want to. It's not a medical condition, it is a neurological wiring difference.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Excellent.

Mary McKenna:

And the thing is also, if you think about a unit, it almost suggests an otherness, a separation. It's up the field or it's not a part of the school, or you think of accident and emergency units, so that's a place you don't want to be.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Yes.

Mary McKenna:

You know. So an autism class as part of the community of the school seems to be a good way, but I'm always hoping to find you a new term.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Mary. That's fantastic. It's clear now in my head. So to dial it back a small bit and to delve into Mary McKenna. Mary, how and why did you become a teacher? Because you had to start to qualify as a teacher first. How and why did you do that?

Mary McKenna:

Yeah, I have no idea. I can't say I was a born teacher. I can't say I always wanted to be a teacher. But my parents died when I was a teenager and then my sister became my older sister, became my legal guardian. In fact I was on a state pension, an orphan's pension. That's what bonded my third level. I also didn't know. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was kind of lost. My world had turned upside down and I knew that my sister was a great teacher and I used to sometimes go in with her and I thought it was familiar to me. And then my mother's friend across the road told me about Freble College up the road.

Mary McKenna:

I was in Kilmocode, it was in Blackrock and the wonderful bit of it was that she got into Trinity once a week. So I thought that'll do me. I had a friend in secondary school who was a born teacher, wanted to be a teacher. She go into Carysfort and she found after six months she didn't want to be a teacher. So I was the opposite of that. When the principal offered to the staff, he said that he'd been approached, tied back for a day at a staff meeting. He said he'd been approached by Beech Park to open an autism class, and I just had one of those moments of you know, the ascension into heaven. Well, it was the opposite the heavens opened, the lights shone down and the golden circle was on me and I was going oh my God, that's what I should be doing. So that's how I ended up.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

That's how you ended up in the early intervention autism class in Bally Boden.

Mary McKenna:

Yes, because I was in Bally Boden as a major. That was your light bulb moment.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Until then, you've been very far and still you were lucky, mary, just to go back a small bit. You were lucky enough to work with one of well, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest minds in Irish education concept economy for a few years beforehand.

Mary McKenna:

So when I came out of college in 1982, and that was the year that they banished corporate punishment, which I think of the changes that have happened in that teaching career and, yes, so I got my first job in Bally Firmish, the nuns Dominican nuns on the roundabout Loved it, but the numbers were going down and I was on the panel. And then I went to Concepter. The staff there were very progressive, like I think there was a nurture room there. If I think about it, there was something very looks like it. We had staff meetings where we really looked at the needs of the children. You know we're always examining it.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So your formative years as a teacher were really under the watchful eye of Concepter. She would have had a culture in that school of what you're describing. There is child at the centre of all the decisions that were made.

Mary McKenna:

Yes, she also. She always had a preference for frebble graduates, so we were kind of all child-centred. Back in the day we had shared area. Do you remember that?

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Yes, yes.

Mary McKenna:

But the good thing was, as a young teacher I was in shared area with experienced teachers and I was in with a lovely woman, maureen O'Reilly, and she had just gone back to do the frebble, an extra refresher or something, and she was doing all these stations and we do maths activities and we had a whole system and it was great. It was all experiential learning. So when I came to Valley Bowden I continued with my maths activities. Then I worked with Miriam in Skolwera. She became a set teacher and she continued the maths activities in the classes to support the teachers in there. I'm getting to a point as well. And when an inspector came in great teacher loved her. Elaine was in her class. The inspector went in and Elaine was doing my maths activities. And the inspector went in and he said to the new principal who was home at the time oh my God, that teacher, so new curriculum with those maths activities Now there you are full servant, so you had your time, I think seven years in Kilnard and on to Bally Boden, light bulb moment.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

when the offer from the principal to the time of the staff meeting that there would be an early intervention class, you said this is for me. What were your next steps then? Because obviously you probably said where am I going to go with this? Where do I go for help? Yeah, what did you do?

Mary McKenna:

OK, I didn't know it was going to be early intervention. We just said yes, to notice in class, but the designation that the department gave us was early intervention.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Right, OK.

Mary McKenna:

So what did I do? I was blessed to have Beech Park multi-disciplinary team supporting me, so I had these wonderful clinic and their specialists in my classroom guiding me. I had occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, so I had my teacher head expanded immensely, because I was actually probably misaligned in ways. My teacher head made me think I should teach things in a particular way and then nurse my question that what was their readiness Like? If I saw a child in a nappy, I'd think, well, I'd immediately jump into what I thought they needed and they needed to be toilet trained. And then you'd say, well, the nurse would come in and say, ok, well, have you worked out that they're registering their body? Do they know where their body begins and ends? And this was all new to me.

Mary McKenna:

But what I think happened was I was able to expand the out-teacher head, which also had a place. It's not that you throw out all your old teaching, but it was a massive learning experience. It was also mayhem and bonkers for about three years and I'd say it nearly because there was no like it was new stuff that nobody had done before. And I really learned an awful lot from the multi-disciplinary team. And now nobody has a multi-disciplinary team. For a few years people were bemoaning the lack of the multi-disciplinary team, but now I say the cavalry is not coming. So let's try and cut our cloth according to our measure and let's see if I can share some of my head expansion with the teachers.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So you're taking your experience, you're going to see Padi to help others, and what you're basically saying to them is the capri isn't common to say you don't have to get out of it. These are some practical tools you can use to, I suppose support the children, how you think about how you help and support the children in order they, as you say, control it.

Mary McKenna:

Yes.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Right, so you yourself. Now you've gone and you've done further studies in Birmingham University, where you were hugely influenced by, I think, Theo Peters.

Mary McKenna:

Theo Peters wasn't Birmingham. But Theo Peters was one of the first in services we got. I loved his whole team that came out from Flanders. But he talked about the autism lens and that if we kind of because we were neurotypical, we had a particular lens, we had a particular understanding the world is designed by neurotypicals, foreign neurotypicals, and sometimes we get it and we get the whole social thing and all the rest. But what actually? To put different lenses in your glasses and see it from the perspective of the neurodiverging child was the huge thing.

Mary McKenna:

He would have said at one stage that there was research to show that when teachers were given five sessions of autism training when they were questioned, they said no, we've done autism, now we've enough. And he said these people are a danger to autism. But to know that you know very little and stay open and questioning, then everything becomes a learning opportunity. Okay, and Rita Jordan was in Birmingham and she said that there was only two things you needed to be good at the teacher of children. And we were hanging off our word because we thought we can do two things and she said all you need is a dirty old rain mac and a big fat cigar. And we were well, that's a lot of good. And then who she was referring to was Colombo.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Yes, yes, yes.

Mary McKenna:

And he was kind of unimpressive and not that well presented, but boy could he read that what was going on in the other person's mind. He was a forensic investigator. And so what I do now with teachers is that I invite them to become Colombo, and we will actually really question it from the child's perspective.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Yeah. So what I'm getting off of there, mary, is that the key to the thing is maybe cast aside what you think you might know from your experience in mainstream and do your best to try and see things through that autism lens, through the neurodivergent lens, in order to understand how those children see the world.

Mary McKenna:

Exactly.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

That is.

Mary McKenna:

But also that you can design your school and your environment in such a way that it can make sense for these children, because they can maybe sometimes see the world as governed by chaos. So you can set it up so that it actually is supporting them to make sense. But also the biggest thing in the autism diagnosis since 2013, when DSM five came in In 2013, the diagnostic criteria for autism for the first time included sensory issues. So anyone who was working on the news yeah, up to that, you had to also have a separate diagnosis of sensory processing disorder. Anyone working in the field of autism understands that sensory regulation is a huge part of how they will support anybody. So I think that schools sometimes need to factor that in that.

Mary McKenna:

The first thing these kids need is an easy body. If they're not at ease in their body, if there's all sorts of torture stuck on them, like I'm sitting here in the chair, I'm comfortable, I'm at ease and I'm connecting with you and we're having a two way conversation. If I was autistic, I could feel as if the chairs, like nails, come into my bone, my clothes are like spam paper on my skin, and then I'm looking at the window behind you and I'm distracted by the crane, I'm looking at the leaves going and then you're asking me questions. I'm not available for focus because there's so much stuff going on in my body, if you like. You or I suddenly had a toothache and the pain is banging away. We are not available for focus or learning.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

I love that phrase.

Mary McKenna:

Not available for focus, so I always encourage the teachers to do what they can for the child so that their experience and ease of body so they're available- Excellent, that's excellent, thank you.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

After a certain amount of time, you got involved in helping other teachers make sense of where they were. You got involved in CPD. Why did you do that? Because I was asked.

Mary McKenna:

Basically. So what happened was Ema Ring was doing her PhD issues in the inspectorate at the time she and Madeleine Hickey arrived in my class. They asked could they come in? And they recorded me teaching as part of her PhD doctorate research because she was investigating the teacher methodologies that teachers used. And she then told I think it was John Crowley or Sullivan oh, you should get married to give a presentation. And John Crowley or Sullivan asked me a nice little comment. And how is John Crowley or Sullivan.

Mary McKenna:

He said he's the director of the SCSS special ed support service.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

So it was at the time in the part of PDST then.

Mary McKenna:

It became NCSE.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Oh, that became NCSE.

Mary McKenna:

Yes, so I said, oh, I couldn't. Oh God no, because I realized I couldn't talk to teachers when I hadn't cloned myself. Along came a particular year where I had great class of kids and the multi-disciplinary team in Beach Park used to come into me and they used to call it Mary's Career Break and they were rocking. Do you know, when you get a class? And it was like all I had to do was scaffold and they were just learning from each other. They were so thriving that I actually mistakenly thought that I had got the formula and I knew what to do now, because look at me, it's so successful.

Mary McKenna:

And I got in touch with John Crowley and she had said will you present your work? And I said I will, because I believed that I've got somewhere. And I agreed and I started writing my own presentation. And well, all those children left me and in September, while I was about to give seminars, in arrived six children and I just couldn't see how I was going to do it. I was great because it brought me back to when you've met one autistic person. You've met one autistic person. So I think in ways I was better as a presenter because I was saying to the teachers oh my God. No, I don't know that and I thought I knew this. But now I'm in the middle of learning again and I think teachers like that kind of honesty. Really, they like someone who's struggling, a bit like them.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

I think, mary, you're 110% correct. No matter what course we were on here, a lot of the feedback would say if a tutor or a facilitator, were you know, exposes their own vulnerabilities, feedback is always very positive on that because there's not the most somebody's on top of them saying, oh yeah, I know everything, this is how you do it, because once you've dealing with people, nobody knows everything and there isn't only one way to do it. There's no many ways of doing it and it can all like your class in September. You can all switch in the morning.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

It's a bit like the golf you think you're going great and you're out the next day and you can't hit a straight ball. So no, out of your day, right, 100%. So now you go into the CPG and that developed. You must have been doing something right, because you were asked again and again to develop further CPG and you're working with ourselves in double West. I know you're in Marino. You do work with NCSC. There's also some private work and I believe, as a teacher in my school say, you're writing a book.

Mary McKenna:

Oh, yeah, well, I think I've written, but it's with the publisher. Open books are interested. Yes, so basically every time I did a course I would think, oh, I never said that, oh, I never said this. And then one of the NCSC associates or actually an advisor came to my seminar because they went to each other's and she said she had just written a book that's Claire Drony, and I have the book, the autism handbook for schools and I endorsed it for her and she said Mary, you've got to read that. She said what you've written, the way you work, and I tried my best and then left it. And then, during COVID, I went again because I actually said I'm out there sharing with so many people. If I don't write it, somebody else will write it. I just need to own my stuff and also it needed to come out.

Mary McKenna:

It was a lovely opportunity.

Mary McKenna:

It was very creative in that I'd wake up at three in the morning, my husband was sick and he'd hear rustle, rustle, rustle, you know, because I'd come with a light bulb and I'd say that's what makes sense, or I forgot about that, and I'd be furiously writing the three in the morning and then I'd go back to sleep again. I've actually got my cat to thank for it, because I've a palsy of a Tomcat and he likes to come in at night and sleep in the bed my son used to sleep in, but he likes them to go out of maybe four in the morning or something, or maybe five or maybe two, and of course I'm just a sucker for him because I love having an animal in the house and he seldom comes home. So when he does come home I'm happy to have him and I get up like an absolute plunker to let the cat out and then I'm kind of lying there in the bed getting more ideas and then like right away. But I loved writing it. I didn't want to call it back.

Mary McKenna:

Supporting autistic children. Where to start, what to prioritize, how to thrive.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Which is the name of the course that you're doing here with us in WF.

Mary McKenna:

Except I called it teaching autistic Teaching. But I think that this, like sometimes the way I work with parents, support the parents of children who just got diagnosed with autism that sometimes the same things apply of help, supporting the child to make sense of what's going on in this new, particularly designed it allowed me to put it in order, rather than when I'm in a course with teachers I'm firing off on different things and what they're thinking, what they're asking, and I'm doing a lot of this. But to actually put it down in linear fashion and work through it was good for me.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

I don't know if it'd be good for anyone else, but I really Well, look if it's anywhere popular as the courses you're doing here for us. Mary, you're a runaway success.

Mary McKenna:

Thank you.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Just to get back to, I suppose, the CPD end of things and how Ed Centres are helping teachers who find oh gosh, I'm going to be in an autism class come September. Where am I going to go for help? You're helping us here in Double West. Help those teachers. What's the most rewarding part of that for you, mary?

Mary McKenna:

Oh, the light bulb moments when you have the teachers in a group, when you get that sense that you're expanding their consciousness and that you have maybe challenged them to think a different way. Because when I was working with the parents and supporting them, the parents would ask me what class should I enroll in? And I just thought, oh, there's different bits. You need the classes that will really support these children, will really understand the perspective of the child, and I just thought I need to do both. And also when you have a teacher, when they say at the end of a course, I can see them changing during the week. And I was in Moreno last week and I think we saw Even by the second day they all came in lighter. I just love a bit of transformation, and I'm not saying that anyone needs to be transformed, but I love seeing and bringing in new perspective and kind of expanding our understanding to align our teaching style with the learning style of the autistic children and they'll all be different but still to give them opportunity to reflect. And that's what I loved about Rita Jordan and Birmingham.

Mary McKenna:

She'd have us howling and laughing, but it was at her own expense. She'd say things that made us reflect on the kind of stuff that we'd be asking kids Do you know what I mean? As with our teacher head. And then she'd say well, why would they answer that question if you know the answer to it anyway? And it may be they think if they know it, you know it. So why are we constantly questioning kids? And we wonder why they won't be bothered to tell us. But if I asked you today, what day is it today? Yeah, and you know it's Tuesday. You also know that I never, a teacher never, asks a question that they don't know the answer to. Do you know what I mean? And then we're getting cross because they're not answering me. And then some teachers would think, oh, maybe they're bold or they're stubborn or something, but it's because, if you understand that they might be in their mind, thinking it's Tuesday, you're stating that it'd be obvious. Do you know what I mean? So why would I need to tell you?

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

I'm just thinking there, mary, and you're talking about that. I have little experience of jurisdictions elsewhere, but I do know how lucky we are in Ireland that we have teachers and teacher tutors who come to the job with such heart and compassion that all they want to do is help the children where they are and to find those light bulb moments for themselves in order that can help the children, and I suppose that's what makes education in Ireland such a wonderful treasure. It's that motivation, that heart, that compassion that I hope we never lose in Ireland, because it does make Ireland a wonderful place to be a teacher and makes Ireland a wonderful place to go to school. We have our faults, doubt and spot. Those kind of motivations. We are very, very fortunate, but anyway, I'm digressing there.

Mary McKenna:

Can I just say I went off on one there. But the evaluations, my favorite evaluations from the course is that I came in to the course anxious and worried about what I was facing next year and the tutor or the tutors because I was with Ann Collins last week the tutors demystified. It gave me the license to explore it and to know that you could make mistakes. And it isn't failure. Every mistake is just another learning opportunity. Okay, perfect.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Every mistake is another learning opportunity, so I'm going to talk to you about your now, mary. Okay, so get your taken hat on like you have a magic wand, okay. Okay, you could change one thing about the education system. So Mary McKenna is in charge of education in Ireland, but she can only change one thing. Just do it. What is the one thing you need to change?

Mary McKenna:

I'd bring more movement and sensory regulation opportunities into every school.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

For every child.

Mary McKenna:

For every child so that they're there. I'd run more gross motor groups, pe, but more often and especially for the children who need that regulation, and I'd have more opportunities for sensory regulation within every classroom, because a lot of schools and somebody will shoot me for saying this but sometimes they think regulation and sensory is ticked because there's an amazing state of the art sensory room down the corridor and I'm saying actually I think that the secret is, sometimes you only go to the sensory room when you need to recover and I'm saying front blow the sensory within the fabric of your day and your daily routines, but also within the immediate environment, so you're not requiring migration to a room to recover.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Brilliant Mary, Thanks. If you could change one thing to the practice of teachers, because all teachers are going to do this in the morning, what would you get them to do?

Mary McKenna:

Probably take a moment to breathe and become present to the children in front of them Because we have well-being. But sometimes it can be a part of the curriculum and I'm finding that sometimes it can be frantic our day and I think that if you could bring your man I love him, dan Siegel, and he's the professor of psychiatry. He wrote in University of California, so it's not just happy, clappy stuff and go. I offer teachers, I'm telling them stuff that is theoretically based, or in theory, not theoretical, the urban practice. So he wrote the co-authored, the Whole Brain Child, and he talks about, instead of the franticness where we're all wisdom and going, that what absolutely is necessary for when you want to be with the child is that the first thing is he become present, conscious presence, and then he has this acronym called PART, p-a-o-t. P is for presence, a for attunement or for resonate with them, leading to trust.

Mary McKenna:

So I think to actually embody that whole thing of relationship being really, really important in education, in all in all education, I think schools have got we're half demented up to the speed of getting everything in and I wonder that the kids are never being allowed to go deep into their learning. That is always next, next strand, next subject go go Like even with play, I think you know can be compartmentalised, and it's kind of just when the especially the autistic kid might be getting into their hyper flow and the lovely ability to zone out All those harsh kind of confusing things and being in that moment and hyper focus of play, and then it's up, clean up and it can be actually painful for them to drag themselves out of it. So what am I saying? I'm saying bring in presence throughout the day and, like that, the mindfulness, as part of how you operate. But it's a big ask because everybody is massively pressured to cover it.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Yeah, maybe it's how we start into the day and dictate the pace too. If you could change one thing, mary, about education centres, which I'm a logic one what would you change about education centres?

Mary McKenna:

Oh, when your education centre here, Alton, is perfect.

Mary McKenna:

It is All right, yeah, change of director, that's the first thing you're doing, right? Oh no, I'm quite happy with education centres. I love coming here Now, but I would say that I did the whole thing of giving a course. That in the education centre is wonderful, and then at the end you've done the course and you send them all out. But then what we developed this year was actually running as an ongoing support group, and I thought that was in a very innovative of you to support me to do it and the centre, because what's happening then is that there's ongoing support.

Mary McKenna:

I call it a kind of support and learning community I'm not sure of the words we should be using but that the teachers are supporting each other, but also we're gathering together. And I asked one girl because I only run it for people who have attended my course previously, because it could be a pressure cooker. If nobody gets my philosophy and the whole understanding of what we've done in our courses, you could be just fabricating. So the participants like that it's only for previous attendees of my course, because I'll say well, what about the three questions, what about the six steps? And they'll all go.

Mary McKenna:

Oh yeah, but one teacher, I said to her and she's actually here today, having done the same summer course last year, because she says no, I keep learning, there's only so much you take in one year. I said to her what do you think is this hard for you when you come in with your own little struggles and then you have to listen to other people's struggles? She says no. She says I came in with a list of questions to ask and she says I'm going as I listen to the people and go, tick, answered, answered, answered. But we don't focus on just the struggles. We look at all the wonderful things that we can do and that, the wonderful things that are happening and like that.

Mary McKenna:

I would have done three of them last year. And I was so heartened by the third one because it was like as if they were kind of the teachers themselves were thriving and they had room in their heads for the extra exciting bits. They were talking about equine therapy and going to this place and that place, so somebody had invited in a boxing club and it was all in a phase of practice, whereas the first day, like and for my first year, as I was barely surviving, do you know what I mean? So they had all. They're not saying it's because of our support group, but I'm saying that the community of support and invitation to expand our practice. It's a it's a hard life.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

And sometimes meeting people who are going through the same experience of yourself is of self support, because you don't feel alone, you feel OK, it's not so bad. I always equated that to two years ago when you have to stand outside the place, when I was a boy, so you understand that the principal is office if you're in trouble. It was never as bad if somebody had switched. Yeah, you're on your own in an older role. So what I'm going to ask you about finishing up now, before we finish up, is if you could meet three top tips for CPD. So what I'm asking you is I'm about to start in September teaching in an autism class. What three topics could I go looking for CPD on?

Mary McKenna:

OK, well, number one, do my course. And then I suppose if you're coming into starting in an autism class, you look at the NCSE and I would say that courses like intensive interaction or one day course could be really helpful the teach method, but also maybe for CPD in teacher centres or education centres. I think we're all trying to sustain the planet and we're all becoming aware of it now and are trying to play a part in sustaining the planet and its capacity to sustain human life. I mean, it's kind of selfish. We're kind of in it for ourselves as well, to get the small picture come down into the micro.

Mary McKenna:

We actually need to sustain ourselves because if we don't sustain ourselves, we don't get up in the morning and go to school because we're not thriving and not effective. I suppose because I learned that when I got sick and couldn't go to school for three months, I realised, all right, well, there's nothing I can do. I was warned by the doctors you have to rest and you have to get better. So I think, to sustain ourselves in our job, maybe the mindfulness and wellbeing is a lovely thing to do in your education centre, because that might be just what will sustain you and if you're sustained. You know the old thing put on your own oxygen mask first, before you go to attend to your children.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Mary, sound advice if ever there was. As per usual, Mary. I thank you so much for coming in today and chatting with us on the Teachers and Selfies podcast. I really appreciate it. We're very fortunate to have you here in Dublin West and I've been very fortunate to touch it over the last hour or so.

Mary McKenna:

So go to me and Mahadne, thank you and thank you. The pleasure was all mine.

Ultan Mac Mathúna:

Tune in next week for another episode of Teachers Themselves. Don't forget to like and subscribe, leave us a review and share it with colleagues and friends. Your feedback informs the show. You can follow us across our social media channels Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Links are in the show notes. If you have any thoughts on today's episode or suggestions for future topics, email Zita here at zrobinson@ dwec. ie. Oh, and don't forget to book that CPD dwec. ie. Thanks again and have a great week. Slan Tamaill.

Mary McKenna:

Teachers Themselves is a DWEC original produced and created by Dublin West Education Centre.

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Ultan Mac Mathúna

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