Around the State 16,000 secondary teachers are getting their placards ready, clearing their desks of work, buying warm clothes and giving pupils plenty of homework to occupy them on the seven days when they will have no classes.
Teachers are in a rebellious mood, and the November revolution is nigh. The rebels are determined to break the chains of public pay policy with one clean snap. They say talking has got them nowhere, and only direct action will do.
While nobody doubts their commitment to lighting the torch of liberty for teachers, the members of the Association of Secondary Teachers, Ireland (ASTI) could not be further from the stereotypical image of the striking worker.
In April at their annual conference in Killarney, Co Kerry, the members appeared to be primarily male, middle-aged and middle-class, more interested in being able to afford a new car than toppling international capitalism.
While the conference was only a snapshot, the history of teachers' unions shows their counterparts in the Teachers' Union of Ireland (TUI) are more likely to storm the barricades, with the ASTI enjoying a more folksy image.
Even the guidelines for their strike on November 14th echo that tradition. Pathways should be kept clear, traffic should not be disrupted and no more than six teachers should picket the school gates at any one time.
Many secondary teachers agree they are unlikely radicals. "We are not natural strikers, and no one really wants to be on the picket line, but that is all that is left to us, the normal channels have been tried," said one member this week.
But now the union has become radicalised, there is no turning back. As one teacher said in Killarney, "We need balls of iron and a spine of steel".
The struggle for teachers' pay comes from the heart of middle Ireland, and the leader of their movement, Charles Lennon BA HDip, is certainly no Arthur Scargill or even Brendan Ogle. A fellow trade unionist joked this week: "His name is definitely spelt Lennon, not Lenin."
Not being a natural exponent of direct action, Lennon has sometimes appeared uncomfortable with the headlong rush by his members towards a strike. His natural caution and belief in "jaw-jaw" rather than "war-war" is one reason for this.
Over the coming weeks another reason he may wince when putting the boot into the Government is that his younger brother, Joe, is the Government press secretary and one of Bertie Ahern's closest advisers. He is likely to be dealing directly with the teachers' strike, but family harmony will be maintained regardless, insists the older brother.
Lennon is described by other teachers as "tough, but fair", and his solid respectability and settled demeanour reflect the wider characteristics of his members.
While the ASTI may have been regarded as middle-of-the-road among Irish trade unions historically, it is now the most likely organisation to give the Government its first bloody nose in the era of the new pay deal.
Lennon's experience as a prop forward at Seapoint Rugby Club may yet become useful as the Government seeks to block his way to a 30 per cent pay rise, which if obtained would be a huge personal victory.
Lennon, a stout man with a sardonic sense of humour, tests his physical limits most mornings in the Iveagh Gym in Dublin's city centre. Occasional games of tennis and badminton and, more recently, hill walking also keep him fresh.
But the next few weeks (and maybe longer) will test his PR skills, his mental toughness and his patience as any person who had a bad teacher during childhood gets to vent their spleen on the airwaves.
Married to Christine, the principal of a primary school in Dalkey, Co Dublin, Lennon says he has many teaching friends and immerses himself in the profession, even taking part in the Education International organisation, which meets in Brussels.
Many second-level teachers see themselves as different from their colleagues at primary, mainly because they have third-level degrees in fields other than education.
But Lennon began his career as a primary teacher in Monkstown Farm national school on the south side of Dublin. He has never taught in a secondary school class.
He worked between 1978 and 1988 with the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) which represents primary teachers. During this period he came into contact with the most recognisable face in Irish education, Senator Joe O'Toole, general secretary of the INTO, whom Lennon admires greatly.
O'Toole, the flamboyant king of the soundbite, contrasts sharply with Lennon, an affable but private individual not given to verbal flourishes or colourful language.
Lennon's entry to the profession is typical of many. From Kilcurry, a farming area outside Dundalk, he says that when he was leaving school, one of main attractions of teaching was the job security. Unlike now, he says, the teacher was always welcome in the local bank and was often one of the few who could get a mortgage.
His father worked in the local brewery and was delighted when he plumped for the dependability of teaching after he left De La Salle College in Dundalk in the mid-1960s.
While studying for a diploma in primary teaching at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra, in Dublin, he got involved in the first student council, where he learned the representation trade.
He then went to UCD where he obtained an arts degree and eventually took the plunge at the national school in Monkstown, not one of the easier beats in Dublin teaching circles of the time. He taught remedial classes for several years and dealt with many severe cases of illiteracy.
After eight years teaching he took up a position in the INTO and has spent his career since in union activism, moving to the ASTI in 1988 as assistant general secretary and graduating to the top job in 1991.
While most of the last decade has been tranquil, the seas have become notably stormy in the last three years, with his membership displaying increasing frustration with the Government.
Lennon, who is regarded as one of the toughest and most successful negotiators on the trade union scene, has been forced to react to the anger and become as strident as his members.
While this must be difficult for such an unobtrusive personality, one teacher's leader said this week: "Charlie may sometimes not agree with everything the membership wants, but he will fight to the death to get the result for them".
Not only has he been accused by some members of not being sufficiently bellicose, there was also a very public spat with the last president of the ASTI, Ms Bernadine O'Sullivan.
While the media tended to skirt around the issues between them, photographs of the pair at public meetings said it all. Lennon says that's now history, and the union's energies are concentrated on the strike. Nevertheless, the constant demands of an increasingly riled membership have certainly taken a toll.
Traditionally the ASTI leadership prided itself on its easy access to the top union bosses at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. But membership of this influential club was cancelled by the membership earlier this year, and Lennon and his advisers were left isolated from the wider union movement.
While many in the ASTI's leadership believed it was a mistake to alienate those at the top table, the membership has grown increasingly suspicious of figures such as the ICTU general secretary, Peter Cassells, and even Joe O'Toole.
Lennon has skilfully readjusted his footing to fall in with the new direction and regularly denounces the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, negotiated by ICTU earlier this year.
He says he is disappointed that ASTI has to take strike action. "It basically means the negotiating machinery has failed," he says. The issue at the heart of the dispute is the status of teaching and education in generally.
"Everyone accepts teachers have laid the foundations for the modern economic boom we have, but the Government appears not be prepared to pay teachers for that work".
He says teachers are in for the long haul. "There is a lot of anger out there and only something substantial will assuage that anger."