A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Centre of the Stage & Business Moguls

Not many exciting things were planned to happen this week but there's always something to do and this week the challenge was to write a play and start a business. Trust me it's not as easy as it sounds. For the play I am in a group and we work together in English class to come up with ideas and write our play. Our play is called 'Schizophrenia'  we are all very excited to see how the play will look on stage, we have big plans for it so watch this space. Ciara and I came up with the idea after being inspired by a story we had read before, the aim of the play is to show how mental disorders are a problem in our world and how they affect people. The play aims to especially show the emotional problems people suffer from because of these disorders so hopefully we will be able to make it an emotional roller coaster for the audience. It's definitely not a Disney story...

This week we also became business moguls by starting our own mini company. There is still a lot of work to be done but we have an idea and we all have jobs to do so soon our business will be taking over the world, well hopefully at least the school anyway. Our business idea is phone cases that will be custom made and will also have useful add-ons such as pockets and a place to put your headphones. It's harder then it sounds Ciara and I attempted to make a prototype phone case and it took us a long time to made a not so great case. 

Walk In My Shoes

Today the school is raising money for a charity called 'Walk in my shoes.' This charity is to help young people who have mental health issues of any kind. Everyone in the school today wore their own choice of clothes and shoes, some people even wore wellies for the charity. Everybody who didn't wear their uniform donated €2 to the charity. 

Mental health is a very important topic that is often overlooked because its very hard for people to know, if someone they know has mental health issues. This charity aims to help young people understand what mental health issues are an how to deal with them. 

Some mental health statistics:

• 1 in 6 employees in Ireland will experience a mental health difficulty.
• 1 in 4 young people in Ireland will experience a mental health difficulty.
• Suicide is the leading cause of death among 18-25 year old men in Ireland and the second most common cause of death generally in this age group.
• Ireland has one of the highest suicide rates in the 14-24 age group in the EU.
• 75% of all mental health difficulties begin before 24 years of age.

The inspiration behind the fundraiser is that people 'walk in the shoes' of people with mental health issues, so that everyone can see what it is like for people with mental health issues. The fundraising went really well in the school today as everybody wore different shoes and they all donated.

Links for help with mental health in Ireland:

Walk in my shoes: http://www.walkinmyshoes.ie/i-needi-feel/

Aware: http://www.aware.ie/help/support/support-mail/

Grow: http://grow.ie/how-we-help/

Mental Health Ireland: http://www.mentalhealthireland.ie/

Aurora and Maleficent Woke Me Up

This week we had our fun walk, which of course meant we needed to come up with a dance, luckily our class names are Disney princesses so we already had a story line. My class is Aurora, who is sleeping beauty, so of course the only logical thing to do was to dress up Mr. Kennedy as Maleficent. After changing our dance multiple times, we finally decided on one. Half of the class would be evil, wearing black bin bags and masks while the other half would be good, wearing yellow. The evil people were mean to each other and the audience and then the good people came in and made them nice with hugs and dance. The plan, which surprisingly actually worked, was for the bad people to take off their masks and bin bags when they turned good. After that we all danced together to 'Wake me up before you go go' because sleeping beauty woke up and we turned Maleficent good.

The dance went really well on the day and we actually ended up winning! All of our practising paid off and of course Mr. Kennedy dressing up as Maleficent paid off too. As Mr. Kennedy said "I am not dressing up as a woman if we aren't going to win." The day was really fun, especially because it didn't rain. It was a busy day of dancing, dressing up and party poppers. 

Work Experience

I had day first day of work experience in North Kildare Educate Together School on the 24th of September. It is a mixed primary school with around 250 students. Meadhbh and I are both doing work experience in the school so we have someone to eat with at lunch, that makes it less awkward but it is still quite awkward talking to the teachers at lunch. When I went in to the school, it felt very weird to me because I attended this primary school. I am a classroom assistant in Senior Infants. On my first day I spent the day helping the students paint their favourite summer memories, I also set up the hall for their PE class, helped the students with their maths worksheet, put up posters and checked the art supply orders were correct.

My second day of work experience was on Wednesday and again I was a classroom assistant in Senior Infants, on Wednesday I helped to set up he art the students would be doing that day. I then helped them to draw pizzas, cut them out and stick them onto card for world food day. After that I took down their older art from the wall,organised it into envelopes for each student and put up their new art on the wall. I set up the hall for their PE class and for the rest of the day I was getting ready what they would need for the next time the students are doling art, I had to scrunch up little pieces of crepe paper, so the students could make a picture out of them for Diwali.

I am really enjoying work experience so far, it is a new and fun experience and I am looking forward to going back next Wednesday.