Bernard has spark to inspire students

The director of the Galway Education Centre is such a dynamo of energy that the day we arranged to meet he was on the other side of the country.

Not even Bernard Kirk could have made the trek back from Donegal in time for our 11.30pm meeting on a sunny Wednesday after we got our wires crossed and he was instead addressing a national education meeting.

Getting stood up may have meant getting off on the wrong foot, but not with Bernard. A more effusive and warm person you are unlikely to meet.

The 50-year-old Cork native has so many ideas about education that he hardly draws a breath. The Galway Education Centre is one of most innovative of 21 around the country whose primary focus is on training primary and secondary school teachers as well as devising and running programmes for students and teachers.

There are tears in his eyes as he recounts his biggest motivation when it comes to improving education for young people.

“I was working on the building sites in London for three years. I used to get up at 5am and collect all these fellas on Holloway Road. The ganger used to pick them up only if they had dirty boots. They would earn £30 a day. They were just cannon fodder,” he reflects.

“I remember working with guys who hadn’t been home in 30, 40 years. Once the ganger went away after his mother had died and he gave me the money for the guys for the week. I had to give £50 on a Friday, £50 on a Monday and £20 on a Wednesday. They never had any money to put away. They were like slaves. They could almost see Ireland but couldn’t make it.

“I thought if I ever get a chance to work with the next generation I’d help give them the skills not to be in that situation again. I know it’s happening at the minute again but I’d hope they wouldn’t be in a position to be exploited like that generation were.”

The energy Bernard exudes fits right at home in the semi-circular building designed by architect Shane de Blacam with its storey-and-a-half height lecture rooms.

Unless you are a teacher or student, you may not have even heard of the Galway Education Centre, which sits proudly beside the old Redemptorist monastery that is now home to art and design and film and television students of GMIT.

The idea behind its design was to create a space of learning for adults and children which would not feel like school.

A former national school teacher himself in Claregalway for 13 years until 1997, Bernard was appointed Director of the Centre just three years after joining a voluntary committee of teachers who manage it.He had only heard about education centres through doing a Masters in Education with his wife Treasa. Although the course was being run by Trinity, many of the modules were held in these facilities around the country.

His wife was also the reason he moved to Galway. After meeting in the teaching training college in Limerick, he followed the Clare woman here when she got a job at Scoil Íde in Salthill.

Treasa went on to do a PhD in co-operative learning which was later adopted by the Irish system. She became a school inspector but is currently working on policy in the Education Department. The couple have two daughters and live in Rockbarton, Salthill.

Memorable curriculum changes overseen by the Centre include the transition from the Inter Cert to the Junior Cert, the introduction of religion as a Leaving Cert subject, the rolling out of the relationships and sexuality education in primary and secondary schools and the move from technical graphics to design and communication graphics, where 40% of the exam is now computer based.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.