Schools set for national art competition final after earning county title accolades
LOCAL schools St John's NS and Teach Academy Homeschool are celebrating being named Junior and Senior County winners respectively of the prestigious national art competition, Someone Like Me, which will see them join 46 other schools to compete for the much sought-after national title at the national awards ceremony to be held at Dublin City Hall on Wednesday, January 17.
Now in its eighth year, the Someone Like Me art competition, which is organised by the National Disability Authority, attracted more than 2,200 entries from national schools across the length and breadth of the country.
The competition was created as part of the National Disability Authority's work to nurture more positive attitudes towards persons with disabilities and, to date, it has seen more than 17,500 children take part in lesson plans and pupil activities designed to challenge our young people to appreciate and respect similarities and differences in people.
The three-person judging panel comprising Ann Higgins, principal of Hospital School Children's Health Ireland; Dr Carly Cheevers, senior research officer at the National Disability Authority; and Laura McGrath, an autism class teacher was particularly impressed with the entries from St John's National School and Teach Academy Homeschool, selecting them as County Winners based on their insightful and inspirational responses to the theme of ‘Someone Like Me'.
St John's NS entered the Class Group with their project submitted by teacher Orna McAndrew. Explaining their project, inspired by a classroom in the school, their project description read: “We are a special class (for children with mild, general learning needs) in a mainstream school but we call ourselves Room 9.
“Yes, we are Room 9 but we all have our base classes and activities that we attend, this makes us all very unique. We belong to so many different classes and activities, but we all share the support and comfort of knowing we are Room 9. Please enjoy seeing all the things that make us unique.
“We can really identify with the topic and we want people to see how we belong and how amazing our school and class is.”
Teach Academy Homeschool pupil Levi Coade - who project was submitted by teacher Sara Coade - said in his project description: “Hello! My Name is Levi and I am 9. I wrote a story about boys Stephen, John and Oisin.
“It was Friday and the school had the annual crossword competition. The theme of this year's competition was "inclusion". There were teams of three children and Stephen and John couldn't find another teammate. Their teacher suggested to get Oisin into their team, but they refused.
“They said that he couldn't walk or run, so for sure he couldn't be quick at solving the puzzle. But then John told Stephen to give Oisin a try because he said that Oisin was the best Lego creator and the best at making crafts. In the end, they were the first to solve the puzzle. Oisin helped the team to find most of the words. From that day, the boys were best friends. And this year's secret message was: "A special child makes the only difference in the world, when he is kind, respectful, sensitive