School News from.... Glenamaddy Community School

NOT alone is the new Glenamaddy Community School a place where the young people of the surrounding areas get educated in a most modern setting, but it's a facility for other members of the community also. Many people use the well equipped health and fitnesss suite to get on the treadmills and rowing machines on Tuesday and Thursday evenings while others use the school gymnasium for a variety of events outside school hours. With the benefit of the sports hall and fully equipped fitness centre, sport in the school continues to flourish with students participating in football, soccer and basketball leagues as well as handball and athletics. After a very exciting start to the current school year, with the official opening of the new building last October, life in Glenamaddy Community School has returned to normal. The first year students have settled in, becoming experts at navigating the myriad corridors and rooms and are delighted with the wide array of subjects on offer, as well as the range of extra curricular activities. Meanwhile on the day of our visit the exam students were preparing for the imminent orals and practical exams. Science Week and Maths Week were celebrated with hotly contested quizzes and competitions and this year saw the first musical in the community school. Seussical the Musical, based on the Dr Seuss books, was a huge success and both staff and students are looking forward to next year's production. Glenamaddy Community School offers an extensive range of subjects at Junior and Leaving Cert levels as well as the LCA and Transition Year programmes and an Adult Ed., PLC in Business Studies. All students have access to specially networked computers and have the opportunity to graduate with the internationally recognised ECDL qualification. In the school's modern woodwork room students of carpentry and building construction proudly displayed their projects ranging from mirror frames to bird houses made by the junior students to scaled down models of hip roofs made by those in the senior classes. The school offers a wide range of extra-curricular activities including student council, music ensemble, choir, Gaisce awards, Young Scientist, public speaking, an after school homework club for first years, where a teacher is always on hand to assist, as well as supervised study which is very popular with exam students. As studying can be hungry work, the student canteen in the general purpose area offers hot lunches, soup, sandwiches, drinks, confectionery etc. The school canteen promotes a healthy eating policy. In a new initiative which encourages students to aim for and achieve a high standard in both behaviour and academic ability, the school has introduced both a junior Student of the Month and a Class Group, award scheme. Both schemes have been well received by teachers and students alike and are hotly contested. School Principal James Duignan says, that while the physical structure of the school might have changed in recent years, the community school's ethos and mission statement continues to be one of creating an environment where each student is cherished equally and is nurtured to a personal, intellectual and moral maturity. The school strives to maintain the delicate balance between the drive for academic excellence, artistic development and the pastoral care for its students. To this end, the Pastoral Care, Career Guidance and Learning Support teams provide an invaluable support to the teaching and learning within this school. It took trojan efforts by the community of Glenamaddy and surrounding areas to convince the Department of Education and the politicians of the need for this most modern educational facility which was built at the end of the Celtic Tiger era and for which everybody is grateful. It is there now for the benefit of the present as well as future generations, and the Glenamaddy school richly deserves having the word community in its name as it is very much a school for the community, of the community and by the community. The school's open night and enrolment for incoming first years takes place on Tuesday next March 1 between 7 and 9 pm.