September 2019 – JMAC- The Blog Experience

St. Andrew’s 6K 2019

St.Andrew’s is a charity close to our schools heart. Having raised almost £82,000 we are desperate to make it to the triple figures by doing all we can for the charity this year and beat our biggest competitors, Caldervale high school.

Not including the money raised from our senior pupils Ben Nevis climb this year. Our School also has a huge turnout for the 6k fun run and the Santa dash.

St. Andrew’s is a charity who cares for those living with life limiting illnesses and also their families through either one of their hospices or home visits. The charity is supported through NHS Lanarkshire but that only covers a small fraction of the cost of running the charities services. That’s why they need our help!

the Charity requires £88,000 a week to run. If everyone in NHS Lanarkshire donated two pence a day we would be able to cover the costs of St.Andrew’s services for a whole year! A little goes a long way and the school is really proud of all the fundraising we have taken part in over the year.

We had an outstanding number of pupils,teachers and even dogs attending the 6K last year and we hope to increase that number yet again this year so bring if you want bring your gran’s dog, your dog, your neighbour’s dog and run, walk or skip round the park!

APD India Visit 2019!

The school welcomed visitors from APD India this September and discussed the organisation and what they do, as well as how their partnership with Scottish schools affects them.

APD have been working with the St. Aidan’s and a number of other Scottish high schools for sixteen years commenting “we would like to thank our Scottish schools for the great partnership which allows us to do more work for those with disability”. On arrival our visitors met with the school captaincy team. The captaincy team and teachers involved in the project were gifted some traditional Bindis and Gandhi caps.

Speaking to the APD representatives they commented on what the charity organisation does and the different sectors involved”APD uses a life-cycle approach where they provide services for people of different age groups with a disability”

APD has a school in Bangalore-which our S5 APD pupils will be visiting in June next year- but some of their other services include educating parents on disability, training teachers and a livelihood programme which teaches young adults how to live independently and gain skills such as cooking(hospitality),engineering, gardening and retail. They also have rehabilitation centres based across the sate of Karnataka for those who have suffered from spinal cord injuries.

MINECRAFT

Just in this may this masterpiece of a game turned 10 years old and in this game has spiked in popularity and lost its popularity to rising again to be the most bought game in the world. But why? well that’s an easy question to answer its a game where you can do anything and everything.

The game randomly generates a world completely unique to you. So, can go in survival and try and survive and beat the bosses or you can just build until your hart contents. There is also sense of adventure and discovery with more than 60 biome variants, 3 bosses, and 2 other dimensions.

There are loads of other mini features like the ability to feed a dolphin and they’ll lead you to treasure. Or you can give a wolf a bone and they’ll become your dog this is amazing because the dog will fight with you and if you get two you can have pups.

Head of Education Visit

Recently, St Aidan’s was visited by Derek Brown, the head of education and families. He was greeted by captain Rebecca Smith and vice captain Gabriel McClymont, they then discussed the mission statement of the school.

Mr Brown commented that this has been a long awaited visit. He was here to meet the pupils and teachers of the school after hearing such positive comments from the recent HMI inspection.

He commented on the importance of listening to students. Speaking about the recent S6 Leaders Conference, he stated “The students gave us a few things to think about that we thought were important such as mental health and well being and around individual rights and not being judged, how we can strengthen that and protect people to help everyone be treated with respect”.

Senior Awards Ceremony 2019

Recently we celebrated the annual senior awards ceremony in St. Aidan’s High School. Pupils from our current fifth and sixth year along with former pupils from last year were recognised for a wide range of achievements.

Head Teacher Mrs Connelly said “it was an excellent evening of real celebration of lots of different ranges of achievements. I think that’s what I really enjoy about St. Aidan’s, we don’t just recognise academic attainment, which is very important and to be celebrated, but we recognise a lot of citizenship and leadership in the school and just dedication from young people. We really saw a flavour of that last night.”

When asked about the evening, sixth year depute head Mrs Devlin described the awards ceremony as being “one of the best nights in the school calendar”

Music was provided by the school’s senior band and chamber choir, along with a beautiful clarinet solo by Anthony McKenna. Mrs Connelly commented on the music saying “once again our music was outstanding. We’re very fortunate to have a fantastic music department and lots of young people who want to perform.”

Bronze dux winner, Claudia Kawik said “I’m very happy and honoured to be receiving this award, I worked really hard for it” and gold dux winner, Kate Hughes commented that she was “thrilled” to receive such a big award and “didn’t actually expect it.”

Christopher Winters, a former pupil who returned to receive a long list of awards said “It’s good to be recognised for the work that we do, I’m sure the other pupils agree with me. Coming back and seeing the people who brought me through the school has been really good and I hope to chat to them a bit more if I’m in and out of the school.”

Congratulations to all our senior award winners!

Top five songs you should listen to

i’m a massive fan of music, i grew up listening to all different kinds of music that really shaped my style today. so here’s a list of the ones i never skip 🙂

no. 1) stockholm syndrome by muse.

i actually grew up listening to muse and still love them.

no. 2) barbarism begins at home (2011 remaster) by the smiths

no. 3) this ones a tie. SMF and GENOCIDE by nascar aloe

no. 4) all mine by kanye west

and finally

no. 5) boy division by my chemical romance

hope you enjoy these songs. there’s a few different things there so i hope on tickles your fancy 🙂 thanks for reading, have a nice day !!

Charity Football Match

A charity football math was hosted by RE class S5 D and their teacher, Mr Bradley. Mr Bradley commented, “The match was the pupil’s idea, not mine, they instigated it. Most of the organisation was down to them and I just made sure that staff knew what was happening.”

The project is part of the S5 RE course. Classes try to raise cash in an enterprising way to support a good cause. The footballers raised over 100 pounds for the Talbot Centre which supports homeless men and women of Glasgow. Sean McKeever and Kieran McMahon, both S5, were enthusiastic participants in the match and in their post-match analysis Sean said, ‘I think the game went very well and I think that we raised a lot of money for charity’.

Lots of staff and students turned up to support the match, which was played in such a friendly manner that nobody knows what the final score was!

Alex Scarrow Authors Visit

Alex Scarrow, known for his series Time Riders and Remade, came to St Aidan’s high school to visit first year pupils and talk about his books. He started as a graphic designer for video games.

Over a year he pitched over 30 games to his bosses and not one of them got made. It got to the point he felt like he was literally wasting his time designing these games. His direct manager told him to make games shooting games because kids only wanted something they could shoot. Alex felt that his direct manager was insulting kids and downgrading they’re abilities. He thought he could do so much more but his bosses told him they’d make so much more money with first person shooters. Alex quit that day.

This prompted him to start writing his books. Alex started writing adult books but thought it was too boring to write for. He began to write for the younger generations because “you guys are more open minded than adults are. Adults get annoyed when you break rules. You guys don’t mind (when I break rules) which makes it more fun to me)”

Time Riders was based on one of these games he had pitched. Time riders is about an agency made up of three kids who cheated death and now travel through time to fix history broken by time travel. The first time rider’s book came out on 4th February 2010 and the series spans 9 books.

Alex visits schools, talking to 11-12 year olds specifically, about his books. Throughout the year he visits schools and libraries, giving talks and running writing workshops.

Wildlife Summer School 2019

During the summer break in July, sixth year student Shannon O’Donnell had an amazing opportunity to attend the RZSS Summer Science School at the Highland Wildlife Park in Aviemore which is aimed at young people in S5-S6.

This programme involved an application process in order to be accepted, hundreds applied, eager for a spot on the programme but only 15 applicants were accepted, Shannon being one of those lucky few.

Shannon took part in various activities during her time at the programme. She discussed how her group was given a different animal daily to study, this could range from Wolverines to Arctic Foxes.

She also stated that she learned about the inner workings of the park and was educated on the humanitarian effects that we have on several species of animals and the problem of current animal extinction in society.

Her favourite thing about the programme was the day she got to make different toys for the animals and when she got to watch the animals on night vision cameras, she commented that it was especially interesting to watch the nocturnal animals.

Shannon is considering a career in science possibly involving neuroscience or immunology. This experience will be a great advantage for her to further her interest in the field of science.

ACN S6 Visit!

On Thursday afternoon, Clair Sweeney from Aid to the Church in Need, or ACN for short, visited the S6 pupils and gave them a talk highlighting the struggles Christians all around the world face each day.

Before the talk we caught up with Clair to discuss the work ACN does and how young people can get involved. She explained ACN’s mission to protect Christians in countries where it is unsafe to practise their faith. She also talked about the work they do from providing children with bibles in Pakistan to rebuilding destroyed homes in Iraq, and this is only a small amount of work compared to everything they do in the 140 countries they work in.

When asked about how it feels working with so many young people she said “Its fantastic and I love the variety and all the exciting ideas they bring”. She expressed how young people can attend the youth rally being held on the 7th of October and described it as “a real highlight of the year” after having such great numbers the year prior.

Clair expressed how central Prayer and Information is to their organisation and they encourage young people to pray for other Christians in need or tell anyone they can about the amazing work ACN does.

On behalf of the JMAC team, I thank Clair for having a chat with us before delivering an excellent talk to the rest of S6. Thank you for reading.