Staff, family and friends recently gathered to mark the retirement of Ann Farrell, a Special Education Needs teacher whose 27 years at the school have left a mark on hundreds of children, on the practice of all her colleagues, and given her a reputation that long ago travelled well beyond the walls of Creagh National School.
Ann is the youngest of four from the parish of Mullagh, a daughter of the late MaryJo and James Farrell. She was educated at Coolagh National School, Kilcooley National School and St. Brigid’s College, Loughrea. She graduated from St. Patrick’s College of Education, Drumcondra, in 1985.
After a year of substitute posts, Ann settled at St. Joseph’s, Lower Illies National School, on the Inishowen peninsula. Thirteen years in Donegal shaped her and colleagues in Ballinasloe would come to recognise the Donegal in her teaching: unfussy, resourceful, and utterly child-centred. She came to Creagh in 1999, at a moment when special education in Ireland was still finding its shape. Ann did not wait for it to settle but kept studying, and acquired numerous qualifications throughout the years.
Ann’s achievements have had a tangible impact on Creagh National School. She became the longest-serving Reading Recovery Teacher in the school, and one of the longest-serving anywhere in the region. She was instrumental in establishing both the Literacy Lift Off and Ready Set Maths programmes, initiatives that have since become part of the fabric of the school day. As a member of the In-School Management Team she reshaped the school’s assessment practices, insisting that data serve the child rather than the file. Her teaching methods as a Reading Recovery Teacher were very early on recognised as best practice and shared on the PDST/Oide teaching platform — a rare distinction, and one she mentioned to almost nobody.
When teaching, her approach was research-informed and endlessly, patiently refined. Above all, she had a gift for reaching the child in front of her, and teaching through whatever the child already loved: obstacle courses, doll’s houses, Lego, trains, or dinosaurs. Nothing was treated as insoluble. Where one strategy did not work she tried another. More than once the solution she arrived at was one that nobody had found before.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Ann’s skill became known well beyond Creagh. Teachers from other schools sought her advice. Newly qualified colleagues arrived at her door with a problem and left with a plan. Over 27 years she mentored a generation of teachers, many of them now leading learning-support teams of their own.
Ask the staffroom about Ann and the same words return: organised, passionate, committed, fair, wise, reliable, and generous. For pupils, the effect was simpler and more profound. Children who had decided they could not read discovered, in that small room, that they could. Hundreds of them. Some of those children are now parents themselves, sending their own into Creagh.
Beyond the school gates she is a horsewoman, a skier, a musician of no small ability, and a woman with a considerable and well-hidden sense of mischief.
On her retirement day, Ann said a few words. She spoke of the privilege of the work, of the children who had taught her more than she taught them, and of a profession she would recommend to anyone with the patience for it.
Creagh National School will keep the programmes she built and the practices she embedded. Ann will be greatly missed by staff, pupils and parents alike, who wish her every happiness in a retirement she has earned many times over.
