‘I want to make sure that every student is music literate’: Kilkenny teacher helping children grow through music

From starting the violin at the age of five to performing in the Dublin Youth Symphony Orchestra, it’s not surprising that Ciara O’Connor’s life has led her to a career in music.

The Kilkenny native attended St Canice’s primary school and after being immersed in its nationally acclaimed music programme, spearheaded by the late Regina O’Leary, she continued her musical journey, playing in orchestras at Loreto Secondary School and UCD.

After starting her school teaching career in Kilkenny and later in Australia, Ciara has returned home and made the bold decision to launch O’Connor’s Music and its Ceoil Cliste programme, which offers fun, hands-on lessons in primary schools.

“It was something I thought about since being in college and I knew I wanted to make it a local thing,” Ciara says.

“Having gone to St. Canices’, I’d seen the big music programme that was there, but when I went to other schools and saw that they didn’t have anything like it, I knew I wanted to change that,” she adds.

O’Connor’s Music started out with just private lessons that Ciara was giving on the violin, piano and guitar, but she soon expanded to include the school programme, though making this move had its difficulties.

“It was definitely challenging at the beginning but it’s getting easier now.”

“I started by going into schools and offering them very cheap programmes and got a good amount of interest. A lot of them wanted it because they really admired what was happening in St Canice’s but said that they could never bring that into their schools because of funding, but when I said that I would bring all the instruments and supplies myself they were delighted,” she outlines.

Ciara offers curriculums for three and six months along with one for the entire ten month school year where students learn a new instrument every two weeks like the cajon drum, violin, tin whistle and ukulele to bring the theory aspect of music to life.

She also does programmes for special needs units and works with innovative games to make music theory jump off the page, ensuring that less students are left behind in terms of getting a full musical education.

“I just want to make sure that every student is music literate coming out of the programme, so we do different games to achieve that.”

“I found that even though I was in great music classes, I didn’t really like the theory aspect so I’m trying to make it as fun as possible with the interactive elements and using popular music, then bringing in trad style as well,” Ciara explains.

Along with being an enriching experience for the students, teachers can benefit from a break too, as Ciara is fully qualified in the classroom.

“The kids are brilliant, and it’s an hour out for the teacher as well. Because I have my teaching degree, they can opt to leave as I’m vetted and the students are delighted to be left alone playing music which is something we didn’t really have when I was in school,” she says.

“I got the idea when I was teaching in Australia from seeing music and PE teachers taking the kids for an hour so it wasn’t all just left on the main teacher.”

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Church Hill NS in Cuffesgrange and Burnchurch National NS are Kilkenny schools which have already taken advantage of Ceoil Cliste. Ciara has also brought the programme to Carlow, Laois, Waterford and Tipperary, with schools in Clare and Limerick also interested for next year.

She only started the project six weeks ago, but already has ten schools signed up for the coming term, has a summer camp running at Loreto in August and is expanding the curriculum for a wider audience all the time.

“I’m creating eBooks for primary teachers at the moment and I’m hoping to give them out to schools and bring Ceoil Cliste all over the country,” she concludes.

People interested in bringing the programme to their school can get in touch with Ciara at 086 052 6398 or @oconnors_music on Instagram.

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