SUSIE Hall, a well-known resident of Baltimore, has taken up office as President of the Retired Secondary Teachers’ Association (RSTA), a national body constituted to represent the interests of retired second-level teachers. She is also a former president of the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland.
Formerly a French and German languages teacher at Loreto College, Foxrock and, for the bulk of her career, at Malahide Community School, Susie has been dividing her residency between Baltimore and Malahide since the mid-1980s.
Susie said: ‘We come to Baltimore almost every week throughout the year, winter and summer, a routine that expanded out to a full 18 months during Covid,’
A member of the Church of Ireland Board of Education, Susie is nominee of the Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross on the Board of St Matthias National School, Ballydehob.
Commenting on the work of RSTA, Susie said: ‘Our membership has a broad spectrum of interests and concerns ranging from pensions, health services, and issues relating to personal security, well-being and elder care generally. Important too are travel and cultural events, and the task of providing opportunity for regular and on-going social contact that is so vital to many, especially those who are widowed and living alone and whose families may have moved a distance away in Ireland or overseas.’
While ASTI president, a role for which she was nominated by West Cork’s Carbery branch members, she was a leading voice favouring the construction of the new Community School in Skibbereen and for the coming together of the three schools in the town from which its student body is drawn.
Following her retirement from teaching, she studied at the Institute of Public Administration and took qualifications in mediation. A member of the Mediators Institute of Ireland, her fields of specialisation are in workplace dispute resolution and separating couples, the latter primarily as a volunteer at the Coolock Law and Mediation Centre in Coolock, Dublin.
