Professor Katriona O'Sullivan

You're hairdressing for years.

I created a program of Manus for people to come into teaching where

she came in seven years ago ray first year of a degree her husband died she's four kids on her own she's a teacher now she posted on instagram like oh my god like you know we can see small things small people but i always think about mr pickering you know or miss arkinson like they helped me look at all the people i've helped because they helped me like that one person could actually be the key tell tell them about those two people just because yeah they haven't read the book

I suppose Miss Arkinson was the first teacher I ever met.

She was Irish.

We're an Irish family in England.

She did two things that changed my life forever.

The first thing was she always believed in my ability to achieve the same as everybody else.

And she never made it dependent on me being a good girl.

When you're in the presence of someone who believes in you and it's not dependent on how you act, it goes from being in them to being in you.

Like a year after being in her class, I remember lying in bed thinking,

I still think that.

Like, I sometimes still think she thinks she's... That's still in me.

That lives forever.

Like, that's what we can do for other people.

And then Mr. Pickering was like it when I was a terminally cool teenager.

You know, I was a reader.

I loved books, Ray.

Loved Shakespeare.

But you can't, like, tell the lads behind the bike sheds that you like Shakespeare because no one's going to want to go out with you.