Online teacher training goes the distance
Paudie O’Neill gave up a high-flying career as an engineer to train to be a primary teacher and online training allowed him to manage the change, writes LOUISE HOLDEN.
‘THOSE WHO can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” Now there’s a red rag to a teacher. Growing numbers of teacher trainees are upending the adage, however. People like Paudie O’Neill, for example, who worked as a civil engineer for six years but realised well along the path of a successful career that he really wanted to be in the classroom.
“I wasn’t pushed out by the recession; it was at the height of the boom that I decided my heart wasn’t in it,” says Paudie, a 30-year-old homeowner from Carrigaline in Cork. The home-owning part is significant: Paudie could not afford to give up his day job and go to Mary Immaculate, the closest college of education to his home.
That’s when he decided to sign up for an online teacher training course with Hibernia College. Back in 2006, the Hibernia method was still the subject of much suspicion on planet education. Some staff and students of the traditional colleges of education were quite vocal in their opposition to the notion of distance teacher training. The students of St Patrick’s College pounded the streets with “yellow pack teacher” banners. Academics rued the passing of teacher training into the grubby hands of commerce.