Teaching Council FÉILTE Event 2022

Last Saturday on the 1st of October, two of our staff members Diane O’Shea and Catherine Coughlan represented KCS at the annual Teaching Council FÉILTE event which was held in the Helix in Dublin. They presented their findings from their TL21 project on using digital tools to support students social and emotional learning. Catherine Coughlan, Diane O’Shea, Aoife Houlihan, Kathleen O’Brien and Eddie Farren have been working on this project over the past two years which involved using digital tools such as the Microsoft Reflect App, Chat function and Forms to check in on students’ social and emotional learning. This year marked the 10th anniversary of FÉILTE. This years theme was Respect, Remembering, Reflecting and Reimagining.

The day began with a greeting from the Secretary General of the Department of Education, Bernie McNally who acknowledged the work that was done by the teaching profession during the pandemic. Emphasising the point that teachers have a transformative effect on children and young people. They were then introduced to Michelle Keane, the chairperson of the Teaching Council, who welcomed all the guests and provided them with the agenda for the day and highlighted the importance of adapting to meet our current societal needs.

Next they had the pleasure of listening to a keynote speaker, Declan Coyle who gave an inspirational talk on transforming our way of thinking. He provided his audience with an inspirational quote “bring our students joy or bring them nothing and to be the change in the world that we want to be.” Furthermore, he explained the importance of bringing out the best in our students, specifically to ‘look for the treasure in our students and draw it out.’ He emphasised the point that as teachers, we are treasure hunters. He ended his inspirational talk with the motto for teachers to follow “light & darkness cannot coexist, worry and action cannot coexist. Go out and make the best of what can be.” Emphasising the power of choice.