Gio
What we’ve been doing.
Hello everyone and Happy Springtime!
The month of February began of course with Imbolc and Brigid’s Day, and the celebration of the arrival of spring. Weaving St. Brigid’s crosses quickly expanded into a number of new shapes as we played with the rushes and devised new patterns.
Pancake Day marked another important celebration in Irish culture. While “Carnival” is celebrated in other parts of the world with masks, costumes, and parades, here in Ireland we satisfy ourselves with making a feast out of eggs, flour, sugar and milk (and a wild variety of toppings). We can never have enough pancakes here at school. Everyone loves them.
Mid-term break came far too soon and was over just as quickly.
We have had a number of visitors this month, each bringing something new into our community, augmenting the knowledge and skills of our staff team, and bringing some novelty and fresh ideas.
Gio has been back with us again for another visit, helping Aoife to teach us about emotions and feelings. Guidance Counsellor Josephine McGread from MSLETB provided our older students with a very informative session on further education opportunities in the local area and beyond, and alternative pathways to further and higher education. We also had a visit from staff of the Berufskolleg AHS, an Erasmus cooperative school in Siegen, Germany. They spent a week in Sligo, visiting different educational settings to gain a deeper understanding of our democratic and self-directed educational concept and practices.
Emotional regulation for children and adults.
Aoife Hughes is a life coach, specialising in ADHD, working with adults and families. She has also developed a programme teaching skills of emotional regulation. Aoife has delivered workshops for both younger and slightly older students this year of the topic of emotional literacy. We are very lucky to have this wonderful resource in our parent community and grateful to Aoife for her time. You can find out more about Aoife’s work @aoifehughescoaching.
We held a Community Meeting during February to share the latest news about the school development and to discuss the fundraising plan with our parent community.
The study has been brightened up with a fresh coat of paint and some exotic plant motifs. In addition to the various visits and improvements to our spaces, this month we have enjoyed felting with Jess, our volunteer artist, excavating craters in Mulch Town, singing with Music Generation, developing a new house band, building shelters, creating woodwork projects, practicing our skills on the climbing wall, building with lego, and recording podcasts.
Planning Permission Approval
Our big news this month is that out long awaited Planning Permission has been approved ! We are, needless to say, delighted and very excited about this next phase.
Big news from Wicklow
Huge congratulations also to Wicklow Democratic School on the purchase of their school building in Rathnew. This is a landmark moment for Wicklow Democratic School after 7 years of operations in various locations, including being nomadic for one term. We wish them all the best in their “forever home”.
Student projects
The podcasting team recorded next month’s podcast with The Majestic Frogs, who would like to introduce themselves to you.
Hello, we are the Majestic Frogs, one of a few bands at Sligo Sudbury School, and we have recently been interviewed on the school podcast, ( Self Directed Life, available on Spotify).
We all felt really good after it because we’ve never really been asked many questions about the band and we really enjoyed answering them.
We covered lots of things, including how the band started, what it is like to have the resources, space, and time to play music at school; and what the future is for the band, like what songs we are working on at the moment, some covers, some originals; and what gigs we intend to do in the near future. It’s a very comfortable place to do the podcast, up in the snug. We had water for our throats (and jellies!), and if we made a mistake, the best thing about it was we could just do it again! (We made many mistakes!) That episode of Self Directed Life should be out in the next few weeks. There are currently two other episodes available, so make sure you give them a listen!
Recently, we’ve been working on some covers of different bands, such as the Smashing Pumpkins, AC/DC, and some Nirvana too. Kevin from Music Generation has been coming in the past couple of weeks to help us with those cover songs. We also have been working on some of our own music and trying to make our own sound as a band, writing lyrics, guitar, bass, drums and so on. We all have different music tastes, so we show each other different songs and artists and mixing genres to, as I said, create our own band sound.
In terms of gigs and concerts, we haven’t played anything since the halloween party in school we have been considering playing maybe at the easter party but we’re not sure yet. There is a gig venue in Sligo town called Serious Business that we hope to be playing in the next couple of months, the date will be announced on the school website.
We’re going to say goodbye now, and we hope to see you in the audience soon! Don’t forget to check out the Self Directed Life podcast! MAJESTIC FROGS OUT!!!
Sligo Sudbury School Podcast
#2. On our latest podcast, we speak to Kostya, a parent in our school community, who is currently building an AI-first product and has an excellent insight into the world of AI. We discuss its potential effects on education in general, critical thinking in our tech-savvy world, how AI could help and support students and…squirrels! We really enjoyed this chat with Kostya and hope you do too.