Community Events – Page 2 – JMAC- The Blog Experience

European Day Of Languages 2019

Every year people across the world come together to celebrate Languages and the benefits they have had to our lives. St. Aidan’s High schools very own Modern Languages department organised treasure hunts for the junior pupils and speakers from all different walks in life for the senior pupils. Kulwinder Bhumbra from Volvo commented “I think promoting and educating people on cultures, languages and other valuable skills goes a long way”

Mr Bradley Head of Modern languages department commented on the organisation of the event “there is a lot of work and a lot of preparation that goes into organising the speakers, it begins months in advance to make sure we get everything we need. its always a great event and very worthwhile ” . The day brings awareness to the rapid decline in pupils choosing to take on a language to qualification grade and teaches the young people of the many doors having a second language can open for them in the the future. Lorraine Donegan ” don’t brush over languages just because you don’t plan on using it to teach in the future”

Michael McGregor -director of corporate banking at Santander-commented on the importance of these talks for young people ” It’s quite an important session and its something I have been doing for a couple of years because I can give back relative and recent experience of why to choose modern languages, if that can help even one person then that is the benefit from my perspective”

2019 Auschwitz Visit

On the 3rd of October, two S6 students went on a reflective visit to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in the South of Poland. Joined by approximately 200 other visitors from Scotland, S6 R.E Vice Captains Carla Foley and Kate Hughes, had an emotional experience as they visited one of the most important sites of European history.

“I feel like dissociated would be the best way to describe how i felt, I just couldn’t comprehend this was where I was” explained Kate. She said she didn’t realise herself that this was where everything happened until she saw a ‘work makes you free’ sign while walking around. Kate also mentioned the tragic side of how the holocaust had a big impact on religion for Polish Jews as many synagogues were destroyed but never rebuilt. Oświęcim, the town near where Auschwitz is located, had a 50% Jewish population.

Kate and the community near Auschwitz urges people to talk about the severity of the genocide that occurred and to find some stories from individual survivors as it is “easier to connect to one person than 6 million.”

Macmillian Coffee Morning

Macmillan cancer support is one of the UK’s biggest charities and provides specialist health care, information and emotional and financial support to people affected by cancer. Macmillan have a free phoneline, online community, and many other resources for those affected with cancer.

Fundraising is crucial to an organisation like Macmillan. On the 26th of September 2019 the s6 year fundraising committee hosted 2 coffee mornings, one for staff at break and one for S6 at lunch.

Staff and students brought in home baked and bought cakes, biscuits, and even tablet for the event. For £3 staff were able to go into the coffee morning at break and feast on the treats brought in with coffee and tea to match.

S6 years got their turn at lunch. For £1 they came in, got a sticker, and had their coffee morning in the hall. Everyone was able to help themselves to cakes, tablet, and biscuits. Many didn’t expect to spend their whole lunch there but soon nearly the whole of S6 year was in the assembly hall.

What started as a coffee morning with some music in the background soon turned into an impromptu S6 year lunch party. With music playing a couple S6 years danced as they walked leading a few to begin dancing at the back of the assembly hall. By the end nearly everyone was up dancing. Miss O’Neil and Mrs Devlin soon joined in. Miss Conley even showed up just in time to be sung happy birthday. The S6 year coffee morning finished with a raffle with 3 students walking away with a prize.

Nearly £600 was raised for Macmillan and it was enjoyed by everyone. S6 year student Samantha Reynolds said “It was a great day for a great cause and seemed like everyone had a brilliant time at the coffee morning and we raised a lot of money for Macmillan as well as hosted a raffle “

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.

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!

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.

SPUC Visit 2019

This week the school had the first visit of many from the Society for the protection of the unborn child or as its more commonly known as SPUC.

SPUC provides talks for students of fourth to sixth year covering a variety of pro-life topics. On Wednesday afternoon some of our JMAC team managed to interview one of the SPUC apprentices, Eden Linton.

Eden commented ” It’s important for school children (to receive the talks) because you are the future and we want our future to be as supporting of women and Valuing of human life as much as possible.” Eden also expressed her thoughts on the controversy surrounding the Pro-life movement ” SPUC Wants to help young people to see a different perspective, that pro-life people do care about women as much as the child. To get them to see pro-life people as not weird or hating women is really important for the organisation” .

We also broached the topic of Pro-life movement in the future and discussed whether or not cultures were changing, Despite only working at SPUC for a few months Eden can already see a shift in culture and society is becoming more inclined to be pro-life. They also run a programme known as project Truth which is a programme which allows 18-20 year olds to travel around different cities in Scotland providing information and support stands for women in crisis pregnancies, those who have had abortions etc. This year Eden was surprised by the sheer support the received from the public because they are so used to abuse online.

Extraordinary Exam Results 2019!

As the new school year begins and we welcome old and new pupils back after a long summer break, St.Aidan’s takes a look back at the wide variety of SQA achievements from last terms exam season. The school is extremely proud of all students who gained qualifications in a range of academic and vocational subjects including Construction, Make up artistry, Hairdressing etc. From National 3 through to Advanced Higher.

Some students in National five and Higher attained top grades in all their subjects, Which is an amazing achievement!

Pictured are the three students who achieved 5 Higher A’s. Kate Hughes, Emily Lebida and Claudia Kawik

Also Pictured are the 5 Students who Achieved 7 A’s in their first exams last term! Aaron Patterson, Ella McKendrick, Caitlin O’Neill, Megan Buggy and Diarmuid Starrs.