Teacher Martin’s a real inspiration!

Jun 29 2009 by Cameron Hay, Paisley Daily Express

A POPULAR teacher at a Paisley secondary school was humbled when pupils nominated him for a prestigious award.

And he was even more shocked when he was asked to pick up the inaugural Most Inspirational Teacher award at the Scottish Schools Magazine ceremony in Edinburgh.

Paisley Grammar teacher Martin Gallagher, 29, scooped the prize when he was nominated by a students involved in the creation of the school’s annual magazine.

He said: “It really is nice to be recognised by the pupils and also to pick up the award. I had been told I was nominated by one of my students but I didn’t think for a second I’d pick up the award.

“It was a humbling experience but I am more excited about this great software we have picked up and will be able to use for next year’s magazine. Hopefully we can make it even better and win some more categories for the Grammarian.”

The computing teacher, who has been in the job for seven years, had spent most lunchtimes throughout the year helping his pupils create the end-of-year book The Grammarian.

Although this was the first time he had really been involved in the creation of the book, which has been produced at the renowned Paisley secondary since 1922, he convinced his superiors that the technology was there to produce a top-class edition in-house.

He said: “The Grammarian’s magazine has been created by pupils since 1922 but I convinced the head and others that they could do most of the desktop publishing in-house and the printing would be the only cost.

“ I did give up most of my lunchtimes to help them create the magazine – except when I took the first year football team practice.”

He added: “I’m not really sure how much we have saved but I’ve been told last year’s magazine cost in excess of £2,000 and this one was just £600.

“All the kids involved worked extremely hard and I was just glad to show them how to do it.”

Representatives from more than 25 schools from across Scotland attended the awards ceremony at Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh.

More than 240 pupils, teachers, MSPs and industry guests took part in an action-packed day which included a careers exhibition, tours of the galleries at Our Dynamic Earth, a buffet and the awards ceremony.

This is the third year of a competition to recognise young creative talent and reward excellence in editorial, design, feature writing and commercial aspects of school magazine publishing and is open to every secondary school in Scotland.

Keith Brown MSP, Minister for Schools and Skills, praised the work of all the schools which had taken part in the competition.

He said “Being involved with school magazines offered excellent opportunities to develop important and useful skills in an enterprising and creative way.

“These skills are very relevant to the workplace and will stand pupils in good stead for whatever they choose to do when they leave school.”

Every winning school was presented with a QuarkXpress8 Design package from Quark Systems. Work experience will also be provided by magazine publishers to category winners during the autumn.