Martin Moreland Principal Our Lady of Mercy Girls’ School
www.olombelfast.org
Subject: Principal.
Age: 47.
Your place of birth: Belfast.
Where You Live: Belfast.
First Job: Mechanical Engineer.
Family/status: Married.
Best advice anyone ever gave you: Be ready to praise, to encourage, to stimulate, slow to censure and still slower to condemn.
Best advice you could give someone thinking of a teaching career: You have as much, if not more to learn from your pupils than you have to teach them.
Prior to becoming a teacher, Martin was a mechanical engineer. He had always been impressed by an inspirational teacher at school, but felt the time was not right for him to continue his studies.
“As my children grew up and I came into contact with their teachers, I had the desire to give something back to the world of education,” he says. “This calling meant that I would leave the world of engineering in 1990 to become a mature student and study for three years at St Mary’s Teacher Training College.” Martin was appointed a teacher of Technology and Design in 1993 and taught in a co-educational secondary school for 17 years. He completed his Masters in Education in 2001 and gained the Professional Qualification for Headship in 2005. In 2010 he succeeded in becoming Principal of Our Lady of Mercy Girls’ School in North Belfast.
Stephen has been married for 22 years and is the happy father of 10 children.
