Occasionally, I (and much more frequently the staff) tie laces for boys in the yard. I use the opportunity to model the task as well as giving the now routine weekend homework of ‘get your mother (always!) to teach you to tie your laces’. On a serious note- if boys are putting pressure on for shoes with laces, use this as leverage to motivate them to learn to tie their own laces. Trailing laces in school are a trip hazard, unhygienic (its not only in the yard laces get wet…… and not only with water), give very poor support to boys who are playing vigorously and staff just do not have the time to keep tying them.
Two weeks ago, the long-awaited inspector from An Taisce arrived to do an evaluation of the schools efforts to obtain Green School status. The visit was a fantastic success and I want to thank the staff who drove (steering would be an understatement!) the effort to get our flag. The assessor was bowled over by the level of knowledge of the boys and their awareness of green principles. Among the changes which we as a school have wrought are
- No litter bins in classrooms
- composting organic waste
- recycling scrap paper and off-cuts so that we can use these as notepaper.
- using text and website for communication instead of paper.
This last change has had implications in that our costs for sending web-tests have increased very significantly. We will very shortly go to a new text service provider Komeer which is in use by some underage teams in the GAA next door as well as some large secondary schools in Dublin. Its founder is a former parent Pat Walsh. To get texts from te school, one has to download the app which is free. More on this in due course.
Upcoming events
- 25th Feb: Palestrina Choir are in school to do aural testing for boys in rang a haon
- 3rd March : World Book Day
- 4th March : Córfhéile in National Basketball Arena in Tallaght.
- 14th March- Lá Glas and Céilí in Halla
- 15th March- Proclamation Day. We have some ideas in gestation as to how we can make this day and the 1916 celebrations real and memorable for the boys
- 29th February, 1st and 2nd March- Sacrament of First Penance for boys in Rooms 7, 8 & 10 respectively. Usually at 1:30 in St, John’s Church on the seafront.