Assessing a new principal is like tackling an Irish Times crossword. Our new principal, Martin McMicheal, cultivates the image of the Simplex crossword (relatively easy to figure out) but on closer scrutiny is more the Crosaire type (inscrutable - just when you think you have the right word, it doesn't fit).
One criterion for assessing a principal is to analyse his language. McMicheal has a facility to do with words what Feng Shui devotees do with furniture. He is a master of the verbal art of harmonising and enhancing the flow of energy in educational surroundings. Try as the more truculent of my colleagues might, they find it impossible to engage him in bouts of verbal KungFu.
His capacity for listening is already legendary. Each time a knotty problem arises he consults widely, sets up commmissions and produces reports which, in the Late Late tradition, have something to excite and/or soothe everybody in the audience.
McMicheal could teach the ancient Greeks a thing or two about rhetoric. Our fractious drama department had the idea of staging Love's Labour's Lost to honour his predecessor. Employing his inimitable sotto voce style, he talked the thespians on our staff into producing All's Well That Ends Well instead. They still don't know why they changed their minds.
Maria, our in-house agony aunt for stressed males, idolises him - she thinks he is as "cute" as Tom Cruise but colleagues who are not soldiers of destiny offer other connotations of "cute". Dubliners on the staff believe him to be a quintessential Corkonian, a person who goes in a revolving door behind you and comes out ahead of you.
He proposes to make civics, cyberspace and sport examination subjects. The revitalised emphasis on sport and physical education is particularly welcome. The idea of a gymnasium thrills us: what a change it will be to have something other than the sky as a roof and the weather forecast as resources for PE classes. I hope the Minister takes note.
In-service training is one of McMicheal's strong points. He invited Senator Shane Ross, the definitive authority on spoiled brats, to advise us on how to devise an effective school discipline policy, how to establish a bond with pupils, how to take stock of and share our problems, and how to act as honest brokers. The senator was rendered apoplectic during the Q & A session afterwards when some staff members wanted him to tell them how they could build up a portfolio of incomes.
Martin McMicheal is indeed a man of many dimensions, but I'm happy to relate that he is not a man of many mansions. It could take four years to offer terminal assessment of his stewardship - the continuous mode will have to do for now: "promising", "making progress" and "brimming with endeavour".
