Children always remember how you taught them, says Mr Melvin

The principal of St Etchen’s National School, Kinnegad, Matt Melvin retires at the end of August, bringing to a close 20 years at the helm there and 38 years teaching.

This week, in an interview with the Westmeath Examiner, Mr Melvin took a look back at his career and the changes that have evolved during it.

The biggest change, he feels, is the improvements in special education, the resources that have been made available and the shift to inclusion for people with special needs.

The people that benefit from this, he says, are those who do not have special needs, the people who have learned to be inclusive and to adapt and converse with others.

In 2016, St Etchen’s opened its first two preschool special autism classes and now they are about to open one for school age pupils.

St Etchen’s had about 300 students and 12 teachers when Mr Melvin started in 2002. By 2016, it had grown to 575 pupils and 30 teachers.

It now has 453 students and 30 teachers – even as numbers continue to drop in schools around the country. Ninety five sixth class students graduated last year and 44 junior infants started.

The number starting this year is slightly higher at 47.

Èxpanding

When he came to Kinnegad, the town was expanding and it continued to do so for the next 11 years, the school growing with it.

Then the crash came and now the first housing development there since 2008 is under way. Mr Melvin feels that is vital to the future of the town and the school as at present, families are leaving because they cannot get houses.

Before coming to Kinnegad, Mr Melvin taught in Dublin and in Castletown and Ballivor, both in Meath.

St Etchen’s has been an important part of his life since 2002, but it is bigger than him, he says. It a fantastic school with fantastic teachers and board of management. When he started there, Monsignor Eamon Marron was in charge and was deeply involved in the development of the school that he had set up in 1985. He was “very progressive, positive and supportive”, Mr Melvin remarked.

Very Rev Tom Gilroy, PP, carries on the good work of his predecessor and is “very committed to providing excellent educational opportunities for the school”.

He is responsible for four schools in the parish – St Etchen’s, The Downs, Coralstown and St Finian’s, Clonard.

After 20 years as principal and 38 years in education, Mr Melvin firmly believes in change and continuity, adapting, but maintaining respect and the Catholic ethos of the school.

He believes it is now time for someone else to take over at St Etchen’s, someone with new vision that can drive the school on, someone with new ideas and a new focus. He also believes that schools should share their expertise and learn from each other “to improve our practice in dealing with complex situations that we encounter”.

Children won’t remember what you taught them, they’ll remember how you taught them, Mr Melvin says.

Good teachers

When he is looking for a teacher, he searches for someone the children will like because he believes a person is three-quarters of the way to being a good teacher if they are someone children like. He learned that from his late father-in-law, who was a teacher and whom children loved.

The children at St Etchen’s are “fabulous, very respectful, very eloquent, very interested in education and very friendly”, he reports. He hopes that he has reciprocated during his time as headmaster and that he has been kind to them.

Matt is “a long suffering but proud Mayo man”, from Ballina. For the last 20 years, he has been promising a night off homework if Mayo’s footballers win an All-Ireland senior title, and he jokes that he will write it into the contract for his successor.

His wife Breda, a Monaghan woman, is a medical scientist working in Navan. The couple live in Navan and have three adult children – twins, Áine, a teacher, and Matthew, a chemical engineer, and Catherine, a physiotherapist.

In Mr Melvin’s office hangs a quote he has adapted and adopted: One hundred years from now, it won’t matter what car you drove, how much money you had, how grand your house was, or the brand logos on the clothes that you wore.

It might make a difference if you were important in the life of a child. He firmly believes that being nice to children has an inter-generational impact.

As you walk into St Etchen’s, you are greeted by a scene by John Skelton of a mother kissing her child as she hands him over. It stands next to the school’s mission statement.

The future

As his time at St Etchen’s draws to a close, Matt enjoys walking around the playground in the mornings, watching parents happily handing over their children and those children happily coming to school, and it feels “fantastic”.

He works with School Leadership teaching, online and in person, those aspiring to be school leaders.

“They get the benefit of my wisdom and knowledge and I tell them how not to do it,” he jokes.

He also works with the Catholic Primary School Management Association, and he plans to continue his work in those fields when he retires and to spend more time with his family and on the golf course.