Tag Archive for: Values

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Transition Year End of Term Report

And so, another Transition Year ends and it has been a rollercoaster ride. Seventy determined, hard working and ambitious young people started the year as they began it – at full speed – with the aim of growing as a person and as an academic. Here is a breakdown of the final term.

In May, many members of our TY took part in a hike along the Wicklow Way, to earn their physical challenge badge for the Gaisce Award. In glorious sunshine, the determined walkers trekked over 50km across some of Ireland’s most stunning trails. There was a visit to Grease in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre and the annual visit to Causey Farm, for the usual fun in the mud!

Some TY pupils were invited to present work they made for the Architect in Schools Programme at the DLR Lexicon library. Our TY Skills Day took place earlier this term also, with pupils learned some basic DIY, hospitality skills and sewing.

The Transition Year Modern Language evening was held at Trinity College in late April. The overall winner was Delia Brady with prizes also awarded to Lucas Perez Soria and Lina Triebold. The judges were Dr Sarah Alyn-Stacey and Laura Le Cleach from the French Embassy.

The 29th annual Transition Year English Evening was held on Tuesday 28th May in the BSR, with Mr Jameson presenting this celebration of pupil writing. The visiting speaker was teacher Mrs Annie Donnelly, who was most impressed by pieces from Rebekah Fitzgerald Hollywood, Delia Brady, Finn Woolsey, Sofia Walker, Sophie Gibbs, Stella Borrowdale, Grant Fabian, Olive Mud, Cerys Mordaunt and Grace Koch.

Cerys Mordaunt won the TY Academic Prize for her excellent presentation on the brain of teenage girls. Many thanks for Alan Cox, principal of Templecarrig School for judging.

There was a great day trip to the local Explorium Science museum …. and, finally, the final Transition Year Award evening took place last night in Whispering House with multiple subject awards presented to pupils for their academic achievements. The Spirit of Transition Year Award was also presented, for encapsulating all that the Transition Year is designed for, to Safia Walker with Ignacio Suarez announced at the runner up. Full details of those awards can be found here.

Transition Year Photo Album 2023-2024

Transition Year 2023-2024
Transition Year 2023-2024
95 photos
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European Youth Parliament – Pupil Report

Harry Williams, Form V, writes on his recent experience taking part in the European Youth Parliament.

From April 3rd to the 8th I was invited to a European Youth Parliament National Session which took place between Cork and Dublin, concluding with a general assembly in the Dáil Éireann. I was in Dunmore East at the time meaning my dad had the pleasure of driving me about two hours to Cork for the registration and first day. After saying goodbye I made my way to the table at the back of Cork College FET, filled with faces that I’d soon come to know and, after a few technical difficulties, I was up and running with my very own lanyard and committee that I would soon be a part of. Since I was there by myself and didn’t really see anybody I could recognize from the regional session I had done a few months prior, I was slightly by myself. There were kids milling about the large conference room, laughing and chatting amongst themselves. They all seemed quite content in their little circles of comfort, so I decided to put on my big boy boots and walked towards the nearest group of people and introduced myself.

I was terrified as I walked up, since you always expect a bit of shunning or some sort when meeting new children your age but, to no one’s surprise, everybody was extremely welcoming and considerate. Turns out there were a couple faces I could recognise from the Dublin session and after reintroducing ourselves (and, at the time, me remembering none of their names) we got to reminiscing on the whimsical things we took part in at the regionals. Remembering this helped a lot with reconnecting, and so did the absolutely amazing lunch of a cold service station sandwich they gave us. I would become very familiar with these in the coming days of the event.

After everybody registered they began with the introductions of the organisers of the event and ”energisers”. For those in the dark an “energiser” is just about the most mortifying thing you can think of doing as a cool and mysterious teenager, group singing and dancing. Typically an organiser will get into the middle of a large circle of adolescents and start singing a “sing after me song” in which the rest of the room copies what the organiser is doing/saying. After a couple of excruciating and also weirdly fun minutes, we assembled into our committees with our chairpersons making their own introductions. The chairperson is similar to that of the mom/dad of the group who is a couple years older and supervises the committee so we actually get stuff done. Then we moved upstairs and got to getting to know each other by playing name games, dancing, and debating morality and guilt.

Following this, we had some tea and biscuit (we were only allowed one) and went back to playing catch with the speaking ball or guessing which instrument the person next to us is likely to play. Once the group had decided I was a tin whistler, we had dinner (a slice of vaguely stale lasagna) and transferred over to our hostel for the next four days. After unpacking and meeting the roommates, I went down and began the nightly ritual of playing a game of cards with way too many people, putting a couple cards into my pockets, winning, and then heading to bed just as I was going to lose. The next day we continued with the team building, this time with competitions between committees.

After dominating every other group, we started thinking about ideas for our resolution. The committee I was on was called TRAN, or the Committee for Transport and Tourism. Our proposing question was “In light of the 2050 EU carbon target, how should the EU further improve the sustainability of domestic and international transportation?” As riveting as it may sound, for me it was actually my first choice. So I was happy to waffle on as much as possible about high-speed rails and how planes and rich people are bad. The following two days were spent on what was called “committee work”. In normal terms, a bunch of kids get together and try their best to come up with a solution to a major EU wide problem. It actually went quite smoothly, bar a few hiccups about monopolies and world domination.

Once we had finished with all of this committee work we were given a day’s break to go to Fotá, Ireland’s premier wildlife picture taking area. However the organizers of the event seemed to have forgotten that it was April in Ireland so Fotá, Ireland’s premier wildlife picture taking area, was closed due to storms. As such the organizers brought us to the next best thing, Kung-Fu Panda 4. After a mid-tier Kung-Fu Panda movie, we made the transfer to Dublin and had some delicious lunch (cold service station sandwiches). We unpacked our bags in a newer and nicer hostel and headed downstairs for more music and card games. That night every committee’s resolution was released for all of the other committees to critique and tear apart. This led to a few dorm wars but thankfully only a few lives were lost.

The next morning was a great healthy start with one apple for breakfast and the hope that I could make it the next 4 hours without eating anything. We made the ten minute bus ride to the Dáil Éireann and got our very own passes and metal detector tests before heading in. The chamber was exactly like on TV, but in real life. The whole situation didn’t quite feel serious until the speaker of the Dáil came and gave us a talk. At which point I began to understand that I was, in fact, sitting in the seat of major politicians in Ireland. After the Lord Mayor of Dublin spoke next, we began the General Assembly. This was a process in which one committee would give an opening speech, then there would be two position speeches (speeches given by opposing or agreeing committees), followed by three rounds of open debate.

These rounds of open debate would start by the jury calling on around six points of interest from opposing committees and then after which the proposing committee would respond as best they could. Once these debates were finished, there was a closing speech and then all of the committees would vote on the motion and whether it should pass. Once the votes were tallied, and the resolution passed or failed, the whole process was restarted. On the first day, there were three committees before lunch, two after, and then a coffee break. After the coffee break (still one biscuit) we began the final two. We finished around four o’ clock after which we went back to the hostel to enjoy more live music and dancing and cards. The final day we had three committees before lunch and then the final committee proposing after lunch. TRAN (my committee) was third on the second day, so I had plenty of time to tear out my hair over every single word on our resolution in an attempt to predict what people would criticize. Of course, I wasn’t even close to any of them but at least I felt like I was doing something. When our committee was proposing the time went by a little too quickly in the run up to my turn. I was responding to the second round of open debate which was stressful enough, but the whole operation being televised and having every team member throwing sticky notes with valuable information on them at me didn’t help. But I managed to get through it without making a complete fool of myself which I was quite happy with. On top of that I managed to tear down another committees’ resolution as they had forgotten to include a way to solve one major issue that they had mentioned in their very own resolution. So if that’s not indicative of a great time I don’t know what is.

Our ending ceremony was emotional as the organizers had spent the last 9 months doing what their names suggest, so their attachment was definitely reasonable and if I was in their position I probably would’ve shed a few tears as well. After the closing, we got a goodie bag from the government and after a few photos, exchanging numbers, and collecting bags, I said my goodbyes and headed back to school. The whole ordeal left me quite exhausted but also very satisfied. There is something very special about the EYP program. It teaches you how to become fast friends, as well as slight enemies. The competition was good-spirited and at the end of the day we were all just happy to have done it. I would highly highly recommend the whole thing to anyone who is even moderately interested in not politics, but making a small change.

An interesting story I heard about during the session was that one of the resolutions that got turned down in a previous national session was then redone in an international session. This was passed in the international session, which led to a committee in the actual European Parliament proposing a real proposition that was noticeably similar to the international sessions, and it then getting passed. So if you ever feel as though nothing you do actually impacts those around you, maybe reconsider. It could be that by doing one of the silly little regional sessions you’ll find that tearing apart other people’s ideas while giving no solution in the meanwhile is actually very very fun. 

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South Africa Trip, February 2024

Form IV pupil, Philomena Schneider, reports on the recent College trip to South Africa.

During half term, the Warden and Mrs Boobbyer took a group of 12 senior pupils to South Africa on a school trip. I was one of them and in the following report I’m going to describe the activities in which we participated, as well as our experience in a country unknown to all of us.

The Friday before half term, the 9th of February, we went set off; first stop, the airport. We had two flights; the first one, 7 hours long, to Doha airport which was mind-blowing to all of us in its greatness and creativity. The next flight to Johannesburg took us about 8 hours, which we didn’t notice much, because we were sleeping most of the time. As we arrived in Johannesburg airport, we quickly found our luggage and went off to take the bus to Tiger Kloof, the boarding school where we would be staying. The Warden was the former principal of that school, so he knew almost everyone already. It was a very warm welcome, equally by the people and by the weather. Because we had a lot of traveling behind us, we just unpacked and got to know four very nice prefects who were greeting us in the evening.

On Sunday we started off with our programme, which this day included a walk around the school grounds after breakfast. This ended up being a 7 km walk, as the school is around 10 times bigger than St. Columba’s. On this walk we discovered the quarry and some ruins of old buildings. Chapel in the late afternoon was a very different experience than what we are used to. People were dancing and singing out freely, which, from my point of view, was great fun and not at all comparable to our chapel services. During this service, we first came across the amazing marimba band. This day was very exciting for everyone, so we talked about our experiences while playing cards after dinner, before we went to bed at around 11.00 pm.

Monday, the actual work started. Again, after breakfast, we made our way to the nearby primary school where we were supposed to help with classes and play with the kids. There was a little awkwardness on our side, but the kids soon were all in and had us playing with them until we couldn’t do anything any more. But that was not the end of the day yet! We had lunch after the primary school project and at 4:00 we went on to have two workshops. The first one was about how to do gumboot dancing and the second one about how to play the marimbas. Nobody from our group knew anything about either of these activities, so we watched and learned. It was very interesting to see how they would dance and it was very funny seeing them trying to tell us to loosen up a little.  It took us a few tries, but in the end we mastered at least the basics. Later that night we went out to dinner, where we got to witness a thunderstorm, which was really impressive. The rest of the night we played cards again until we went to sleep.

Something different was planned for us on Tuesday. We went to help Mamma Maria cook and serve food in a soup kitchen which she supervises. Because we were done with the food quickly, we went next door to play with the kids in day-care who were about 2 or 3 years old. Then it was time to serve the  aforementioned food to the people who came. The soup kitchen was located in Vryburg’s township, Huhudi, so most of them were starving and very happy about the meal they got. At around 2:oopm, we went to get our own lunch, of course, after helping Mamma Maria to wash the pots and plates. In the afternoon, we went to church again, where this time, a cultural evening was held by the Tigers. The marimba band as well as the gumboot dancers were performing. From our side Cerys was the only one brave enough to go forward and play something. It was rather spontaneous, so everyone who wanted to contribute anything could do so. For dinner we were supposed to cook our own meal, which was a chicken stew. Split into 4 different groups, we cooked it over an open fire and in the end, a “Jury” got to test it and determine a winner. This evening we went to bed early.

We got to hear the early bird song on Wednesday, at 5:30am. The sunrise walk was, in my opinion, very early, but totally worth it. It was really spectacular seeing the sun rise above the quarry, from where we were watching. Because it was so early, most of us went back to sleep right after it, to have a little rest before breakfast. This day, we were again doing the primary school project and got to see the kids again. Sadly, just short this time, because at 11.00 we drove off to another school to hand out sanitary pads as a part of the HER project at a school with major social issues. Right after it we went to have lunch and to go to a farm which had a huge wedding venue. There, we could do things like horseback riding or Kalahari surfing, but we mostly just played football. For dinner we had a barbecue, or braii, and went back to Tiger Kloof after that.

On Thursday we went to a disabled home, not far from the soup kitchen. It was very humbling to see the conditions under which the staff had to work and the people being taken care of. They were mostly children, but there were also 2 or 3 adults. We helped with feeding them and after a short break, where we went to see a lion farm, we got to play games with them outside and give them their lunch inside. We picked up our own lunch and later that day we went swimming in the quarry, where we played a few games like Marco Polo. For dinner we went to Orexi’s,a steakhouse in Vryburg, and after eating we went back to pack our bags for the next day.

Friday morning after breakfast we got a bus to take us to Pilanesberg. We said goodbye to everyone and off we went. The bus travel was about 5 hours with two short breaks. When we arrived at the game park, welcomes by monkeys, we had to hurry to bring our bags inside and go out almost immediately after, because we had a safari booked for 15 minutes after we arrived. On the first game drive we saw a lot of elephants, wildebeest, and even a warthog and three cheetahs, among many other things. This drive lasted for 3 hours, so when we came back, we jumped in the pool and went straight to dinner. We also went to bed quite early as we had to get up at 6 am the next morning.

As I mentioned, the second game drive was at 6:00 am. This time, the most seen animals were rhinos, which was very exciting. After this safari, we had breakfast and packed our last things. At about 10:00am, we took the bus to Johannesburg and first visited an African market, where everyone got souvenirs and later visited the Apartheid Museum. This taught us a lot about the apartheid system, which was very interesting to me and I wish we have had more time to spend in it. Finally, for the end of our journey, we drove to the airport, where we went on the 8 hour flight to Doha followed by the 7 hour flight to Dublin.

I think this trip was a once in a lifetime experience and I would recommend it to anyone considering it for another year. I brought back lots of memories I won’t ever forget.

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The Warden’s Thoughts on …. Apartheid

I spent half term in South Africa at my old school, Tiger Kloof, with a group of 12 Columbans. In the past I have written about the extraordinary history of the school and its stand against the apartheid government, but that is not the subject of this blog.

I spent some time in the lead up to the trip telling the group about apartheid, but I am not sure what was going in. People of my generation and a little younger grew up hearing about it in the news regularly, but for the current generation it is a vague concept at best. They know nothing about townships, homelands, Sharpeville, Soweto riots, sporting boycotts etc., and although they will know the name of Nelson Mandela they probably know very little about him.

To understand South Africa now, you have to understand its history, or else it makes no sense. Why do the racial groups still live in separate parts of cities and towns? Why do some South African whites speak English and others Afrikaans? Why is there such a huge gulf between the rich and the poor? To go into the soup kitchen which I set up in 2015, surrounded by shacks and piles of uncollected rubbish, one cannot fail to ask questions and be disturbed. South African history is a little like Irish history…it is very complicated and confusing, but that does not mean that one should not try to understand it.

After most of a week at the school, we headed off to see another side of South Africa, visiting Pilanesberg, a beautiful game park. We didn’t see everything but we did see plenty and it made a great contrast with some of what we had experienced before. Then, on the way to the airport we stopped off in Johannesburg at the Apartheid Museum and I commented to my wife that this might be one thing too many; the group were tired, the weather was so hot, they were looking forward to going home. Let’s keep the visit to the Museum fairly short, I suggested, as they may not get a lot out of it.

I was wrong and felt slightly ashamed. It is a great Museum and it was apparent that the story of apartheid still has the power to shock a new generation. To the credit of the party they were gripped by the pictures, the personal stories, the brutality and the violence. They even clambered inside a Casspir, one of the armoured cars in which terrified young white boys used to patrol the townships. Be of no doubt that apartheid was dehumanising and only enforceable through violence. The sad state of South Africa now owes much to the legacy of those times…the deliberate separation of family units, migrant workers forced to work away from their families, the school boycotts, detention without trial. A regime that was enforced by violence and disenfranchisement has left its DNA in the new South Africa. Trauma does not heal overnight…it will take generations.

The genuine interest of our pupils demonstrated to me again how the story of apartheid in South Africa still has much to teach us. Next time I take a group there I want to go the Apartheid Museum on arrival and not on departure, because what you experience subsequently will make much more sense once you understand the history and the context.

South Africa can be depressing but when things are dark one can choose whether to despair or not. As the saying goes, ‘it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.’ I choose not to despair, as I know so many wonderful people there who make great sacrifices on behalf of others and do extraordinary things for their communities. It may have many villains but there are also many heroes and they give me hope for the future.

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Warden’s Blog – Righting the Wrongs of the Past

If you were not too distracted by the hysteria surrounding the announcement of the European Super League – thank goodness that plan is off the table – you may have been following the verdict following the trial of the police officer who killed George Floyd. I am sure that the whole world breathed a sigh of relief when the verdict was announced and we all hope and pray that it represents a new era in policing and racial justice in the United States.

I was interested this morning to read another headline on the BBC News website, with more encouraging steps to right some of the wrongs of the past. The British have always looked after the cemeteries of their First World War dead very well and they are very moving to visit. However, it transpires that non-white soldiers fighting for the British were never given their own headstones, but were merely listed on memorials, or in documents, or not at all. The actual graves of most are not known. As shocking as it is to our modern sensibilities, it was thought that ‘the average native…would not understand or appreciate a headstone.’ Thus the contribution of thousands of colonial troops to the British war effort has never been properly recognised.

An inquiry has reported that an estimated 50,000 Asian and African troops, who died in the conflict, were ‘commemorated unequally.’ There are now plans afoot to set this record straight and, although I don’t know the form that this will take, it is surely very positive that authorities are not saying merely, ‘let’s make sure we get this right in the future,’ but ‘let’s put right an historic wrong now, albeit 100 years too late.’

It reminds me very much of a trip I made in my last few months in South Africa in 2016, when I visited the historic battlefields of the Zulu War of 1879 and the Boer War, which pitched the British against the Afrikaaners from 1899-1902. At the time these wars captured the imagination of the British public like no other and tales of derring-do were eagerly reported in the British press. Now we are rather embarrassed by it all, although it is a fascinating period of history. My first visit was to Spion Kop, a major battle of the Boer War, as well as an embarrassing British defeat. On a rocky hilltop hundreds of troops from Liverpool were mown down, but their heroism was commemorated in the naming of a new stand at Anfield, the ground of Liverpool Football Club, which, because it was steep and high, was given the name the Spion Kop. As a Liverpool supporter I felt that I was making a pilgrimage.

However, the point of my story is this. On top of this rugged and distant outcrop soon afterwards the British, ever keen to celebrate their heroes, put up memorials to those who had died from their Liverpool regiments. They are all listed and it is moving. However, what was forgotten and not acknowledged was that these white soldiers were supported by large numbers of Indians acting as stretcher bearers and water carriers. Many of them died, but there was no memorial to them. The honest, tough Liverpool soldiers received a fitting monument, but perhaps it was not considered that these Indians would have ‘understood or appreciated’ such a memorial. Or perhaps worse, it was thought quite simply that the life of an Indian was not worth as much as a white man and that it would have insulted the soldiers to commemorate the Indians in a like manner.

Anyway, whatever the original thinking was, it was fitting that fairly recently (within the last 20 years or so) this wrong was put right and there does now exist a memorial to those Indians who died at Spion Kop and a tribute to the bravery of all the Indians who were involved, including, remarkably, a young stretcher-bearer called Mohandas K. Gandhi. Incidentally Winston Churchill was also there, working as a journalist. It is extraordinary that two of the giants of the 20th century were present at what was, in the bigger scheme of things, a minor skirmish.

It is never too late to right the wrongs of the past. The conviction of a police officer doesn’t change the past, but it does send a message to the future. And the building of memorials, even at a much later date, does also help to address the prejudices of the past and help us to look forward to a better and more just future.

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