|
St Joseph's College Lucan
CAO Offers: We hope our students were happy with their CAO offers. We were delighted to hear many of the career and life paths that the girls now intend to pursue. The warmest wishes to all, as you embark on the next stage of life's journey!
Outdoor Seating: We would like to thank our parents and our Parents' Association for sourcing outdoor seating and ground sheets for students to sit on at lunchtimes. They are particularly beneficial at this time, when the weather is good and we are encouraging students to take their lunch in the fresh air. If any parents would like to donate ground sheets, they can be left at our school reception.
New Student Council: We would like to give a big welcome to our newly elected Student Council and wish them every success this year. Our new Head Girl is Aine O'Brien (many of you might remember Aine as the lead in our 2018 musical 'Mary Poppins') and our Deputy Head Girl is Laura Sharkey. We know Áine and Laura will be excellent in their new roles.
Our 4th year students went on their first TY Trip on Wednesday. They visited Causey Farm and the weather was glorious!
Canteen: We are delighted that our canteen is back up and running, serving a selection of cold lunches and snacks to students and staff.
School website https://stjosephslucan.com
Follow us on Twitter: @STJosephs3
Colaiste Phadraig
Zambia Immersion Project: The much anticipated Zambia 2020 trip was another casualty of the COVID-19 outbreak unfortunately. A group of 16, comprised of five teachers and eleven senior students, were due to head to Zambia on 27th May for a two week stay but the trip was understandably cancelled due to the pandemic.
The Immersion Programme is a wonderful opportunity for students from CBS schools to visit a developing world in the Christian spirit of being with the people on the ground. The groups offer as much support and assistance as is practicable over the course of the two weeks that they generally stay for. The school's 1st such Immersion Project took place in the summer of 2018 and the feedback from those who took part was exclusively positive. They got the opportunity to experience 1st hand issues of inequality, poverty and injustice in the developing world and for pretty much all of them it was a life changing experience.
This year's group had spent almost 18 months fundraising for their trip and they were extremely close to their target when the schools closed on March 12th. The trip was fully organised, with flights and accommodation booked, and everyone was gearing up for a trip of a life time. They had planned to fully immerse themselves in a local Zambian community and work with those most need of support and assistance in homes, schools and hospitals. They were to work on various aid projects and share their expertise, knowledge and talents with those in the host community.
The Immersion Programme is rooted in the desire to have meaningful experiences rooted in basic kindness and decency with the emphasis on human relationships. The principal aim of such projects is to increase the desire and capacity of students from Edmund Rice schools primarily to act in Christian solidarity with others for a more just world. It provides those who participate with an opportunity to live their faith through working together for social justice.
The students were looking forward to making a positive contribution to their host community in Zambia and they had been in constant contact with their hosts throughout the planning and preparation process. At the moment, the Zambia 2020 Immersion Project is on hold for the moment, with no clear start-up date lined up yet. The hope is that it can take place sometime in 2021, obviously depending on how things progress both nationally and internationally with the virus. Further updates will hopefully follow in the weeks/months ahead.
The entire school community is extremely proud of our Zambia 2020 group and their fantastic fundraising efforts over the past 18 months. They have all been, and continue to be, outstanding ambassadors for our school and the CBS name in general. The host community are equally devastated at the cancellation and they too are praying that the trip can go ahead in the very near future.
School news: Our students have settled well into a new sort of rhythm over the past two weeks and once again we commend them on their adaptability, determination and co-operation in the face of unprecedented changes and challenges in their school experiences. They have fully complied with all of the new health and safety regulations and have shown tremendous maturity at all times despite the loss of some aspects of school life that they most enjoy.
Sport has always been an integral part of the CBS experience so the lack of competitive sport is a loss keenly felt by players and mentors alike this current school year. Hopefully this is just a temporary situation as it saddens us greatly that we are currently unable to offer the traditional sporting activities to the huge number of sports fanatics in our school. At least they are allowed to play non-contact sports in PE classes, with volleyball and tennis football proving to be very popular at the moment.
Football: Hard luck to Lucan Sarsfields on their defeat to reigning champions Cuala in the Dublin Senior A Hurling Championship semi-final held in Parnell Park recently. Approximately half of the panel is made up of fairly recent past pupils of the school so we had a keen interest in their efforts to qualify for their 1st final appearance since 2010. Their magnificent victory over traditional powerhouse Kilmacud Crokes in the 1/4 finals had sent shockwaves throughout Dublin Hurling but Cuala, going for their 4th successive Senior A title, were just a step too far for the Lucan lads unfortunately.
Well done also to Harry Ladd (another very recent past pupil) who won the prestigious Intermediate Footballer of the Year Award from his college DCU in the summer.
|
