StKilian’s Community School
YOUNG SOCIAL INNOVATORS
The Young Social Innovators finished last year with a Funky Shoe Day that meant they were able to donate over €100 to ‘Living Life Bray’, ‘Be Well Bray’ and ‘Jigsaw’. We would like to thank everyone for their help and co-operation throughout the year.
REVENUE COMMISSIONERS
TY students attended a presentation from the Revenue Commissioners. This was an excellent presentation teaching students about income tax and about what the information on their payslips actually means. This was very beneficial for TY students in their summer jobs. We hope to run this again this year.
‘YOUTH CONNECT’
Last year we hosted a visit from ‘Youth Connect’ to both LCA and TY students. This workshop involved teaching students about their rights in the workplace. Students learned about break entitlements, rest periods and minimum wages etc. It was a very beneficial workshop, particularly for our 6LCA students, many of whom were already working in part time jobs, and who benefited greatly from knowing their rights. We also hope to roll this out again this year, to ensure all our students get the information they need. A big thank you to Ms Brophy for all her work in this very important area.
BRAY BEACH CLEAN-UP
A group of 35 fifth year students from St Kilian’s CS took part in the ‘Clean Coasts Big Beach Clean’ on Friday, September 15. This was an international event taking place on the September 15, 16 and 17 across the world to help remove marine litter from our oceans. In 2016, nearly 800,000 volunteers in over 90 countries removed 8,193 tonnes of marine litter from the world’s oceans.
The students worked extremely hard along Bray breach and the promenade and definitely did their school and the local community proud by collecting four large bin bags full of rubbish from the beach. This effort is all part of the very active Green Schools Committee in St Kilian’s. Well done to all involved particularly, to Mr Donohue the highly innovative and enthusiastic Green Schools co-ordinator in St Kilian’s.
ART IN ST KILIAN’S
On Thur. September 7. Ms Hume’s fifth and sixth year art students visited the wonderful, ‘sold out’ Vermeer exhibition in the newly renovated and just reopened National Gallery in Dublin, where they had guided tours of both the exhibition, and parts of the beautifully restored galleries.
They also saw the magnificent specially commissioned sculptural wood piece by Joseph Walsh in the airy new foyer. Mr Connolly their woodwork teacher, who accompanied this group with Ms Hume was hugely impressed by this piece. Luckily the bookings had been made for the students as soon as the Vermeer exhibition had been advertised last May, since many other schools who tried to book in Aug/Sept. were unable to get bookings, because the exhibition was completely sold out.
Many of these lucky students had also seen the fantastic Caravaggio exhibition in the National Gallery, and the stunning Freud exhibition in IMMA before the summer holidays.
To have four paintings by Caravaggio, and 10 paintings by Vermeer in Dublin was a real coup for Ireland, and to be able to see these magnificent paintings in their own city is something that our students will grow to realise was a really special experience for them.
Every year our senior art students are lucky enough to be provided with a full and busy schedule of visits to exhibitions, galleries, museums and buildings of architectural merit.
In October 6 years will visit Newgrange and Knowth to witness the world renowned heritage site first hand, and later that month the fifth and sixth years will visit the beautiful 18th century Palladian Mansions at Castletown and Russborough much beloved by their teacher Ms Hume. Fifth years will visit Newgrange and Knowth in May 2018.
Fourth years will visit the ‘Sculpture in Context’ exhibition in the Botanic Gardens, also in Oct. This visit has become an annual outing for St Kilian’s and our students in past year’s have loved this day spent drawing and studying contemporary sculpture in the beautiful surroundings of the Botanic Gardens and the stunning Victorian glasshouses.
Art in St Kilian’s is a busy department and the subject is always much in demand, and we have had some wonderful students, a number of whom make art their career, including Ms Ring a former student of ours, who is now a qualified Art Teacher, and who is presently teaching art in St Kilian’s with Ms Hume.
Mr Lawless (another of our art teachers) is presently seconded to work on the new Junior Cert Art programme, and Ms Murray is presently on maternity leave having recently had a beautiful baby girl. Congratulations to her. Her students have been very successful in getting into the finals of the ‘Junk Couture’ contest for the last few years, so fingers crossed for this year too. Students are already hard at work with Ms Ring on their costumes for ‘Junk Couture’.
So ‘all go’ in the Art Department in St Kilian’s and a busy and exciting start to the new school year, particularly with a new Leaving Cert. And Junior Cert. syllabus this year. Congratulations to all our LC and JC Art students last year who did really well, and we look forward to seeing what they do in the Art World in years to come.