Our teacher remembers you when you were a very young teacher starting your first job teaching in Scoil Lorcain an all-boys school in Kilbarrack. At the time there were over two thousand children in the parish of Kilbarrack-Foxfield and almost one thousand of them attended Scoil Lorcain.At that time Kilbarrack Foxfield was a newly created suburb on the perimeter of the city. Newly arrived local boys were called “culchies” when they went back to visit their old friends in the city centre.
At that time It was normal for teachers to have up to forty five children in their classes at this time. You might wonder how they even fitted in the classroom but then the tables were much smaller with up to six pupils sitting around a two trapezoidal shaped tables. Recently a pupil in my class complained that she didn’t have enough space at her table. She had the space of three pupils back then. The forty five boys from Mr.O’Donovan’s first class are scattered around the world although some now visit Scoil Eoin as grandfathers of our current students.
As a young boy sitting in his primary school in Co.Cork Mr.O’Donovan could scarcely have imagine some of the new inventions that have been developed in recent years and have been introduced into the school since he started teaching..Items such as the spirit duplicator, reel to reel tape recorder and BBC commadore Computer have been superseded by later inventions.In this era of scanning and instant photocopying it is hard to imagine that once handouts were manually printed using a Gestetner.In recent years the advent of the Interactive whiteboard and the Internet were beyond the wildest dreams of Mr.O’Donovan when as a young boy he wrote stories fin his primary school about how he imagined the future.
Over the years hundreds of children have passed through your classes and benefited from your knowledge and expertise.You contributed in many ways to the life of the school sharing your expertise and knowledge of many aspects of the curriculum, Gaeilge, mathematics, computers and science.All of these activities and contributions had the stamp of a teacher who was totally dedicated to his work and had the admirable and conscientious sense of duty always putting the welfare of this students first.
He was the teacher who purchased organised and catalogued many of the books that are currently in the library. We hope that when he returns on a visit we’ll have it in the same condition as he has left it.
Mr.O’Donovan could turn his hand to many things training young footballers in Naomh Barrog, making movies, assisting in the garden club and even demonstrating his knitting skills to members of the Knitting club.
Today a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. You are now free as a bird ready to fly away on many new adventures. We wish you good health and happiness in the years ahead and hope that you will have the opportunity to explore many new areas of the world.
Go n-eiri an bothar leat is an old Irish saying wishing you good luck on the road of life.
Míle buíochas Thanks a million.
