Offaly teacher becomes first-time children’s author!

As the mother of three young children and a full-time primary school teacher who commutes daily from her home in Clonminch, Tullamore, to St Tola's NS in Delvin, Westmeath, Julie-Ann Carroll certainly has a busy life. In the midst of this hectic schedule, the high-achieving Offaly woman also found the time to write a children's book which has just been published.

“Our Super Teacher” is a self-published book which Julie-Ann began working on when she was pregnant with her third child, Luca, who is now seven months old. The book encompasses everything that the young mother and teacher is passionate about as it focuses on the mental health and wellbeing of children.

While she always had an interest in writing a book for children, Julie-Ann Carroll says she eventually put pen to paper as a means of honouring her good friend and fellow teacher in St Tola's, Aoife Kelly, who sadly passed away last year.

“Aoife was a truly inspirational teacher, she was really passionate about supporting the mental, emotional and physical health of children and in teaching them the life skills they need in today's world to navigate their way through dealing with their emotions.”

“Our Super Teacher” is Julie-Ann Carroll's way of “honouring the memory” of her fantastic teaching colleague and friend, Aoife, and she says the book “embodies everything that Aoife was passionate about as a person and as a teacher”.

Like the late Aoife Kelly, Julie-Ann Carroll strongly believes that children's mental health is an area that should be given more focus in the school curriculum, and her book was written in the hopes of giving children a range of strategies and methods that they can use to care for and support their mental, emotional and physical wellbeing.

Along with writing the book, the young Offaly teacher also did all the engaging and colourful illustrations, having always been interested in arts and crafts when she was growing up. The book is accompanied by a practical resource pack which is tucked neatly into the back of the book and is designed to assist parents and teachers in helping children to learn about meditation, yoga, affirmations, mindfulness and gratitude. The resource pack covers nine wellbeing practices with step-by-step instructions for each one, using language that is fun and engaging for young minds.

Julie-Ann, who is the daughter of Kate and Paddy McKenna from Blueball, admits that she “took the long road into primary teaching” and actually qualified initially as a secondary school teacher! “My subjects were Technical Graphics and Construction Studies, but after subbing for a while I realised that secondary teaching wasn't for me, so I went travelling and eventually did my post-Grad in London and qualified as a primary teacher,” she says.

When she started teaching in St Tola's NS in 2011, Julie-Ann Carroll says there was not “such an urgent need” for mental health and wellbeing supports to be provided to children as there is today. “Our school is in a very rural area, yet the children are being impacted daily by everything that happens in the world around them, and they also have to contend with the all-pervasive power of social media, so they have a lot going on in their minds and it can be very difficult, if not impossible, for them to process everything.”

She is hoping that her new book will arm children – and their parents - with the resources they need to navigate the tricky world around them, and to cope with the huge range of emotions they will experience as they grow from childhood into the teenage years.

While she has approached the Department of Education to see if they would be interested in taking the project on board, she accepts that they rarely endorse “private projects.”

Married to Dubliner Mark Carroll, and with two other children, Jack (aged 5) and three-year-old Mae, in addition to baby Luca, Julie-Ann says she would “love to continue writing” children's books and would love to focus more on “promoting kindness.”