Mr. Shane Martin:

Ar dtús báire, caithfidh mé a rá go bhfuilim an-sásta bheith i bhur measc inniu agus an t-ábhar tábháchtach seo a phlé libh, ábhar faoina bhfuilim fíor-phaiseanta agus díograiseach. Go raibh maith agaibh, ar dtús báire, don chuireadh. I am a former secondary school teacher and the first 13 years of my working life was in school. I had an Irish and history degree and ended up in special education for nine years. I moved on to psychology and, after qualifying from Jordanstown, I worked with adults with mental health difficulties with the national training and development institute, which is now the national area network. When I studied psychology in Belfast I had noble aspirations to help those who became unwell but that job placed me in the town in which I lived and that was life changing, as I discovered there was no group that needed to be attended to as such. Instead, all of us need to stay well. I had my first past pupil as a psychologist by Christmas of the same year and it took about two years to reach a level of competence, as with any new job, after which I began to wonder whether psychology came in too late.

We always have to reach out and help people who have symptoms and offer them pathways to well-being and happiness with evidence-based strategies. I told people what was wrong with them, what caused it and what to do next. As one grows into a job one discovers there are different ways of approaching it. I often look back on my teaching career and see that there is sometimes an obsession with mental illness. While we need competence and compassion, I often wonder if we have failed to sow the seeds of mental wellness within schools. We give a huge chunk of our life to education and primary and secondary education, in particular, can either be a very positive or a very negative experience for children. A lot of students left school without the toolbox to cope when things go wrong. Life will challenge us, we do not have control over everything and things will happen that we do not necessarily want to happen.

I began to think it would be lovely to merge my skills as a teacher with my knowledge base as a psychologist to reach out and harness resiliency in communities in Ireland. As a consequence, I was asked to speak in schools and I have spoken in many schools. As a former teacher, I know I could probably never return to teaching because it is a different job from the one I left. I know teachers are expressing a sense of overload because there has been so much change and there is now so much accountability. When I was teaching, there was no such thing as an inspection and there were no lesson plans. Teachers are under serious pressure. Many of them feel their job circumstances are posing challenges for their mental wellness.

There is massive scope to harness a culture of resiliency within schools. I am aware that simple things can make a significant difference. The teachers in our schools probably do not know that the wonderful evidence-based things they are doing are making a meaningful difference. It is wonderful that the establishment of well-being teams has been promised as part of the new junior certificate programme. The pastoral care teams that are in most schools do powerful work to reach out. The teacher in a mainstream school who has primary responsibility for learning difficulties or special education might be perceived as the only person who deals with that area, but the truth is that every single interaction between every teacher and every child in that school is critical. Science now knows more about those who survive crises. I have counselled past pupils who achieved great results in the leaving certificate but crumbled to pieces when they faced their first crisis in university or the workplace. We need to think outside the box when it comes to our young people. We need to be resourceful in how we engage with them about their mental health. Schools need to empower their students with a toolbox for coping during the inevitable crises and challenges of life.

In recent decades, psychologists throughout the world have learned more about resilient people who thrive despite adversity, achieve positive outcomes despite setbacks and misfortune, and sustain their health during testing times. Within a few years of taking up my position as a psychologist with the national learning network, it started to dawn on me that I needed to consider whether this research could help us to develop initiatives that could foster resilience in school communities. One sometimes hears people saying positive and well-intentioned things. Someone recently suggested to me that we need to bring resilience into schools as soon as possible. The reality is that resilience is not a module within a course or a subject in its own right. A school can cultivate an ethos or culture of resilience by taking a whole-school approach to it. I have done a great deal of work with principals and deputy principals throughout the country because I know there is a critical need to make school management aware of evidence-based approaches and initiatives. We sometimes make the mistake of assuming a targeted group needs resilience. When schools are preparing sixth class primary school pupils, they should not focus exclusively on children who are in difficulty. I would never want that to happen because it assumes not only that such children need this help, but also that children getting ready for first year in secondary school who come from happy homes that give them a sense of security will always achieve greatness and positive outcomes in schools. The reality is that all children need resilience skills. A whole-school approach is needed.

Our research indicates that four key areas make a critical difference to ensuring the desired outcomes are more likely to occur. The first of these areas relates to caring relationships. In some cases, the teacher is the critical person who is beside the child during a difficult time, who believes in him or her and who gives him or her a sense of belief and self-esteem. This is happening, perhaps indirectly, in schools. All teachers need to know they have the potential to offer this form of support to all students. UCD research on the concept of a "significant adult" has shown that if parenting is weak or non-existent, tragedy has struck a home or a child has learning difficulties and feels hopeless, it makes a considerable difference to the child if he or she can interact with a teacher who cares for him or her.

Our research also shows that better outcomes can be achieved if teachers and schools have expectations for all students. There can be an obsession with academic brilliance. Schools tend to be adjudicated within their own communities by the results they get. As I suggested earlier, some children who achieve greatness in the leaving certificate by getting well over 500 points crumble to pieces when they face their first crisis in their first term in university. We need to ensure there are high standards of academic brilliance. All children should be stretched to their capacity in terms of their intellectual ability. A teacher in a school who shows the same passion and interest in someone achieving 200 points in the leaving certificate is making as important an intervention as a teacher who encourages someone who is taking seven honours subjects in the leaving certificate with the aim of getting more than 500 points. Children and particularly teenagers are intelligent because they notice very quickly if other students are receiving more attention. I am not saying that happens in general, but it can happen indirectly. We nearly need to legislate within a school community to ensure all children receive feedback about how they are doing and how close they are to the targets they set for themselves.

The third vital area shown by our research is the need for opportunities for participation. Many children who come from unhappy homes or have had trauma in the past can shine in school. It is important for teachers to understand that all children must be allowed avenues to tap into their own talents and strengths within the school community. Sometimes schools make the mistake of appointing leaders as prefects. Maybe they should be teaching leadership to everyone, thereby allowing every student to be open to the concept of leadership. It is important to allow all children to shine, for example in school concerts. There might be students who have talent in art but are not doing art. Students with musical talent might be studying physics instead of music. It is possible that the greatest failing of education is that we are sometimes more obsessed with deficits, disadvantages and disorders than we are with strengths. Some schools in America are formally assessing children for strengths at intake to ascertain what they are uniquely brilliant at and to give them opportunities to shine in those areas and feel involved in their school communities.

The fourth key area revealed by our research is social connectivity. There have been massive changes in that regard in recent times. I often feel that even though houses are closer to each other than in previous times, people have never been further apart. There can be children on the same road who do not know each other's names because of the different avenues for social connection that now exist. I refer, for example, to the revolution that has taken place in social media. The point I want to make about social connection is that the more friends young people have, the better. It is a critical skill.

I have often said that sometimes the greatest friend of depression is solitude. One does not have to live alone to experience solitude, one detaches oneself from the people with whom one is living. How many families sit around a table anymore and hear each other's stories of the day? Schools have to initiate attempts to connect children to their community, in particular, and allow them opportunities to volunteer in their communities and to participate at all levels within the school community. Even those who appear to be reluctant at the beginning can sometimes shine when given trial periods of responsibility and become hungry for more of it when they realise they have that capacity.

I have made a number of recommendations, which I will not outline in detail now. The main one, and I am passionate about it, is that the wonderful teachers in our wonderful schools do not necessarily have to become experts in psychology to make a difference. They do not have to take on extra courses or more work on top of the work they already do, but they must be affirmed in terms of the science that shows that certain interventions which are taking place in school by certain teachers or interventions that all teachers can become involved in make a difference to more children in the schools. I would love resilience to be a core module within the teaching qualification at primary and secondary level and to see professional development around the unique culture that is necessary to ensure that resilience is more likely to be fostered. The good news is that very simple things make a huge difference in a world that has become far too complicated.

I thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to mention some of the matters about which I am passionate.