Mary Rose O'Shea
Profession and company: Teacher, Chicago Public Schools.
How do you celebrate your Irishness? I celebrate my Irishness by carrying forward the values my grandmother and other family members modeled: resilience, wit, resourcefulness, and a deep commitment to community, justice, and education. Growing up, my grandmother took my brothers and me to Ireland each summer, where we stayed on our great-uncles’ farm just outside Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh. These formative experiences in 1990s Northern Ireland profoundly shaped my understanding of people, place, and identity — as well as the importance of community, dialogue, and forgiveness. Both my personal and professional lives have been directly influenced by these experiences. At home in Chicago, I continue to honor my Irish heritage through music, education, cultural events, and storytelling. I learned fiddle through schools like the Keane Academy of Irish Music and the Academy of Irish Music, and studied Irish step dancing with the Trinity Irish Dance Academy. While at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I co-founded a student organization dedicated to traditional Irish culture, through which I led weekly slow sessions and played with a performance group. Today, I continue to attend plays and concerts, and play fiddle as time allows. Just this March, I joined my brother to play a few tunes and demonstrate a few steps for our nephews’ classes on St. Patrick’s Day. My brothers and I are also part of a research team focused on documenting the history of Irish dance halls in Chicago. To me, Irishness is not just about ancestry — it’s about carrying forward values, nurturing community, and finding strength and wisdom in stories, both inherited and shared.
Name a hero you admire and why? I admire my paternal grandmother, Lilian Brigid O’Shea (née Campbell), a fiercely independent woman whose life spanned both continents and eras. Born on a farm in Fermanagh in 1912, she, like so many others, left home to find work. After passing the Civil Service Exam and moving to London, she served under Sir Anthony Eden, working with the British Foreign Office during the Blitz and later completing a stint in Moscow. She was present for numerous major historical events of the era, including the Tehran Conference, though her role remains largely unknown due to the Official Secrets Act. After marrying (and subsequently leaving the civil service), she moved to Montreal, where my father was born, and eventually to Chicago, where she worked for the Board of Education and participated in a variety of Irish cultural events and organizations, including the Council for Irish Arts. She was feisty, faithful, and fiercely practical — she took me to Mass nearly every Sunday during elementary school, brought us to Ireland in the summers, and invested in savings bonds that later helped pay for our college educations. She taught me to always go a step further — to reach for the next goal, especially as a woman; to place enormous value on family and history; and to find joy and adventure in life, no matter the historical or social context.
Something people would be surprised to know about me... I performed the Irish fiddle solo for President Mary Robinson at the Irish American Heritage Center during her 1991 visit to Chicago — but I never actually got to meet her. My dad had been part of a delegation that met her earlier in the day and couldn’t get into the auditorium to join my mom and great-aunt. Little did I know, he was watching proudly from behind the curtains the whole time!
Biography: Mary Rose O’Shea is a National Board-Certified English language arts teacher, reading specialist, and instructional coach at Mather High School in Chicago. A proud graduate of Chicago Public Schools, she brings over two decades of classroom experience, school-based leadership, and service as a union delegate to her work as a literacy leader and advocate for equitable public education. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Literacy, Language, and Culture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where her research focuses on teacher development, professional learning, and preservice teacher mentorship. She is also the founder of ChiPraxis, LLC, an educational tutoring and consulting company committed to advancing literacy, teacher research, and professional development.
