December 2024

Have a Fantastic Winter Break!

Firstly, I want to wish you all a lovely break as we come to the end of 2024. Many of you will be celebrating Christmas and I hope, if you do, you have a lovely holiday. However, whatever you do  or celebrate during the two weeks off, I hope you enjoy some time with your families and have some time to relax. I hope you all enjoyed our winter concert this year which brought us back to the 1990s!

Thank you to all of you that came along for the event and for your cooperation and kindness as we tried to shepherd over 500 people in and out of the hall on both days. It is no easy task to try and manage all the cars, and thank you to our parents that volunteered their time and to Solomon for coordinating. Thank you to our ticket scanners and sellers as we gave digital tickets a go this year. It was lovely to see the smiles and good humour from people as they came into the building. 

Once in the building, I'm sure you noticed how brilliant the place looked! That was in no small part to Emma and the parents' association who went above and beyond to make the hall look like the scene of a 90's disco. I almost felt like a teenager again! The Parents and Student Councils got together to run our popular tuck shop and they did a great job too! They were also joined by some of the 5th and 6th class who were raising money for our sensory room and geodome, selling everything from cookies to bracelets to a variety of calendars. We were also very grateful to all the companies that sponsored prizes for our raffle. Thank you to all of them and please make sure to support them for their generosity. 

I'm sure you'll join me in your admiration of how well the pupils did in all of their performances. From Bob The Builder all the way to Freed from Desire, and everything in between, every song brought me back and all of them were fantastic! A huge thank you to the teachers and staff that helped the children get ready for their performances. The planning started in September so a lot went into them! A special well done to Isabella and Aliyah for their solo performances at the concerts.

As we leave the 1990's celebrations behind, and come to the end of 2024, I wish you all a lovely break and a happy new year. We'll see you in 2025! We have a couple of staff changes coming up so please see them below.

Keep happy, safe and learning

Simon

As we end 2024, we are very sad to say goodbye to David who has been with us for the last year. David taught 6th class and he's been a fantastic asset to our school. David will be returning to Australia with his fiancée after the winter break and we will miss him very much. We have secured a replacement for David who hails from his neighbouring country. After the break, we'll be welcoming Ryan from New Zealand to our school. Ryan is an experienced primary school teacher and has moved to Ireland to play rugby with Tullow. He will work four days a week with Caitriona takign the reins on Wednesdays. 

We also are saying a temporary goodbye to Marlena is will be going on maternity leave. We wish her all the best. Rory, who the children know well, will be taking over from Marlena after the break.  We're also happy that Kendra will be extending her time with us after the new year.

We are going to be reviewing our mobile phone policy. Currently, the school operates a policy that phones are not allowed to be used in school. Unfortunately, we have had a couple of breaches of this policy and we want to strengthen it in so far as we can. I hope to host a small focus group in early January. If you are interested in joining, please email me with your interest. I am mostly looking for people in 5th/6th class where either a phone has not been given to their child or a phone has been given to a child for a specific purpose. 

We understand that your child is the most important person in the whole school for you, and that it can lead to great upset and anger if anything happens to them in school.  Due to the nature of a teacher's job however, they may not be immediately available to you for a conversation.   Unfortunately we are seeing an increase in aggressive communication towards staff recently. Please bear our Dignity at Work policy in mind.  If you need to see a teacher, please make an appointment via Siobhán or via an email to the teacher.  An email can take up to 5 days for us to respond to, but it will usually be answered much quicker than this.  Teachers are in direct contact with children until 2:30pm every day as you know and may not have time to read an email at short notice.  In responding to a reported incident the teacher may seek advice or more information from other parties involved before replying to you.  In case of an emergency please ring the office directly, especially in relation to changes in who is collecting the child or whether they are going on the bus, as a direct message to a teacher may not be seen in time.