INTO Conference - Bundoran Diary: Kathryn Holmquist finds a kind of Bob Dylan serenity and dedication among 800 delegates.
First impressions: "Beware of Golfers."
I was sure they couldn't be serious, until - as I struggled up the 300-metre drive of the Great Northern Hotel, Bundoran, with my newly-acquired laptop - I was nearly hit by a golf ball.
The last time the INTO held its conference here a teacher was brained in similar circumstances. To say that the Minister for Education and Science, Mr Dempsey, barely avoided being brained yesterday wouldn't be an exaggeration.
For Mr Dempsey's benefit, there should have been a sign at the entrance saying: "Beware of Teachers".
He started out well enough, doing the thing that I've come to discover is one of the main points of the exercise - schmoozing in the hotel bar.
INTO members were genuinely impressed that he took the trouble to arrive the night before his speech, giving him time to work the reception rooms greeting teachers individually.
Morale was high among teachers, who have been invigorated by the recent change in leadership.
Then he blew it yesterday morning in one deadly sentence.
"In my experience there are quite a number of people - deputy principals and so on - who are not doing the job they are paid to do."
From that point on, morale went through the floor.
One deputy principal said if the Minister had dived off the cliff walk next to the hotel he couldn't have done himself more damage.
The slow-hand clap said it all.
If teachers were a resort they probably would be seen as a bit run-down and old-fashioned. When meeting them you realise this is completely unfair.
This being my maiden outing to a teachers' union conference, I had a suspicion that teachers cared mainly about improving their own circumstances.
Primary teachers blame the ASTI for this perception. When they were dragged into the benchmarking process as a result of the ASTI's unpopular industrial action, primary teachers feel they were short-changed. All the public resentment stuck to them as well as secondary teachers, but the primary teacher's financial benefit was much less in the end.
They talk a lot about feeling undervalued. If so, aren't 800 of them mad to choose to spend their Easter holidays in a conference centre debating motions and listening to speeches when they could be on Spanish beaches?
But when the conversation about teaching overspills from the conference hall and continues informally throughout the evening and well into the early hours of the morning, you realise that these people are seriously dedicated. They enjoy the politics of it all, but they are driven by a kind of Bob Dylan sincerity.
When the INTO was founded in the 19th century, it was so pompous that all delegates had to wear top hats. In the past two days, I've seen no pomposity, but I have listened to passionate, impromptu discussions about a range of concerns - special-needs teaching, disadvantaged schools, run-down schools and the newly-named "Luas schools".
These are middle-class schools along the Luas line where so few of the children have learning and behaviour problems that teachers are forced to put up with the largest class sizes. Many of these teachers feel disadvantaged because they're perceived as advantaged.
If you ever feared school as a child, being in a room full of teachers takes some getting used to. Nobody actually said: "We know who you are, and we're watching with the eyes in the backs of our heads", but there was no doubt that they were grading me, as surely as I was grading them.
There was even a senior civil servant who fondly remembered my husband's Aunt May, a famous teacher in Dundalk.
This sense of tradition and interconnectedness is palpable. Several generations of teachers, ranging in age from their 20s to their 80s, rub shoulders with senior civil servants and union officials, all exchanging views with infectious bonhomie.
In a touching moment which demonstrated this shared feeling of vocation and purpose, a retired union leader, Tadhg Mac Phaidin, was presented with the INTO President's Medal for his 40 years of "vision, ability and dedication".
Vision is a word these teachers use a lot, and by the end of yesterday I was glad to hear INTO general secretary John Carr banning it from his motto, which was "vision-led, not problem-driven". But when the Minister paraphrased him in his own speech, Mr Carr changed his motto on the spot to "action-led, not problem-driven".
This is Mr Carr's first conference as leader, and the word on the ground is that he is popular and inspiring.
People got so used to seeing him as the man behind Joe O'Toole that they're a bit shocked that Mr Carr can be so dynamic in his own right.
But then again, he is in his element - as are the other 799 teachers at the conference.