March/April 2022

Marching into April!

We had a very busy March in Carlow Educate Together with loads going on from the start! The 1st March is St. David's Day in Wales and Emily treated her class to Welsh Cakes. However, it was also Pancake Tuesday so a number of classes learned how to make pancakes and learned about why many cultures celebrate the day by eating pancakes! We had World Book Day on 3rd March and it's fantastic to have a wonderful library team back in action. If you are interested in volunteering in the library, please let us know and we'll get you in touch with the team. The school also celebrated International Women's Day where every class learned about inspirational women in the world. Each class was given a copy of a book about Malala Yousafzai to learn about her story. If all that wasn't enough, we spent the next couple of weeks ceelbrating all things Irish with our Seachtain na Gaeilge celebrations. We had traditional Irish singing, céilís, bodhrán lessons, and an online ceolchoirm (concert) which we streamed live on our YouTube channel. Every class gave a performance and it was great to see so much Gaeilge in the school.

As we move into April, we are looking forward to the spring break but it's going to be a busy few weeks ahead. April is a time of spring festivals such as Easter, Passover and Vaisakhi. Our Muslim friends will be marking Ramadan for most of April this year. April 1st is also celebrated by many people as World Atheist Day and many people use the month to explore concepts and values of humanism, atheism, rationalism and so on. April 1st often falls on a school day so I'm sure the children will have a few tricks up their sleeves for their teachers! (Remember that April Fool's Day works both ways so watch out!)

Obviously we can't go through a newsletter without mentioning COVID19 these days. Cases are again on the rise, and although, thankfully, people are not as sick as they used to be, it does mean that we again have staff shortages as the virus spreads again. We will do everything we can to keep the show on the road but there may be some supports that won't be able to go ahead. We have banked some hours when we couldnt' get substitutes so we will be looking at using those for some intensive catch up sessions in the summer term. I'll be in touch about this after the break. Until then, keep happy, safe and learning.

Simon