Cool Yule in Saint Aidan’s

 

 

 

Christmas Jumpers Make the Day

“Wear your Christmas Jumper to Work” took on an extra dimension when the students of Saint Aidan’s ditched their uniform for a day and wore their festive finest. A colourful array of Christmas jumpers were the crowning glory of the students who turned up in their smart-casual outfits.

With everyone paying a pound for the privilege of wearing their festive best a £642. was raised for Save the Children and the APD partner-project in India. The party mood was added to as first and second year held their party in the social dining area, with the Saint Aidan’s massive DJ’s Deepcat and Ginger filling the floor as they dropped some monster beats!  Big shout out for Jamie and Josh please. Respect! 🙂

 

Strictly Come Dancing- The Saint Aidan’s Edition

 

Strictly came to Saint Aidan’s on Wednesday the 20^th December when staff and seniors took to the floor to entertain the students in a glorious extravaganza of stylish dance and elegant costume. To be fair, that was the aim, but delivery was more comic than composed.  However, the good-natured event saw the staff and students deliver a fun-filled afternoon at the expense of only a little dignity leaking from the participants.

Elf-costumed PE teachers cavorted wildly and Mr McKague, Depute Head Teacher, delivered an homage to the dance influences of his distant youth that had the hall roaring its approval. Mrs Claire Connelly, head teacher, stepped into the shoes of Darcy Bussell to lead the judging panel. Those wildly cavorting elves, specifically PE Teacher Jamie Craib and Social Studies Teacher Melissa Bourke, won the day with a routine that really impressed the panel as it referenced the slosh, Grease and Dirty Dancing, but which was ultimately its own unique performance.

Nearly three hundred students watched the show and a £750 was raised to support the Saint Aidan’s ongoing commitment to the APD project for disabled young people in India.

Social Studies Department teachers Lucy Kelly and Caroline McHenry organised the event and commented: “Thank you to all the staff who gave up your time (and dignity) to put on an excellent show- it was so worthwhile and great fun! Mr. McKague’s performance was a particular treat. We raised a fantastic £750 for APD and couldn’t have done it without support from the whole school community.”

Christmas Hampers Delivered

Food Hampers

Every year the students and staff of Saint Aidan’s work hard to bring some extra Christmas cheer to the local community. One annual event that is going from strength to strength is the appeal that goes out to all of our students to collect food that goes into festive hampers for distribution to pensioners in local parishes.

Students bring in their donations and everything is brought together and organised through the tireless efforts of our fourth year citizenship class, led by Mrs Elisabeth Hynes. Boxes are wrapped in Christmas paper and the donations are sorted and organised to make sure each hamper becomes a real Christmas Treat.

Mrs Hynes commented, “Thank you to everyone in the school community, teachers and students, who have worked to make the Christmas Parcels project complete.  Local people will be getting our Parcels now.

Thanks to all the staff who helped in any way and huge thanks to the staff who delivered parcels to the parishes:

 

Mrs. Brown – St Athanasius, Mr. Connarty – St Ignatius, Miss Donnelly – St Aidan’s, Miss Muldoon, St Patrick’s Shieldmuir and St Thomas’, Mrs. Telfer – St Patrick’s Shotts, and Father Bruce – St Brigid’s and St Mary’s Lanark.

School Christmas Concerts

The school Christmas Concert went with a swing once again as the Saint Aidan’s musicians put the festive season into overdrive. Close to one hundred young people participated in two events- The Christmas Concert on Monday 18^th December and the Pensioners Concert on the afternoon of Tuesday 19^th December.  The school assembly hall, elegantly decorated with festive finery, was filled to bursting point for both events.

The young musicians created a range of great groups: from the Junior Band, Choir, and the Senior Concert Band through to the Samba Band, Swing Band and ensembles for clarinet, saxophone and flute. The variety of talent performing at the concerts was amazing and some of the classic sounds of Christmas were given a fresh and exciting spin by the Saint Aidan’s musicians. Special mention should go to Katie McCrum of S4, who performed a technically brilliant and emotionally powerful solo performance of “My Grown up Christmas List”, a song that really got to grips with the real moral message behind the festive season.

Over two hundred pensioners from the community were invited to a matinee performance of the concert and enjoyed a festive tea while being entertained by the young musicians. Once again the event was a great success.

Mrs Celia McEachen, Faculty Head of Music and Art, was delighted with the commitment, hard-work and talent of all her young musicians within the department, commenting, “It is wonderful to see our young people deliver such a high level of performance and it is a real testament to the hours of dedication they put into their musical education. These young people really go above and beyond our expectations of them when they collaborate in creating events like this. The amount of energy and enthusiasm in the room that they generated through their performance was amazing.”