Author: sjburke

Congratulations to Conor O Sullivan from 3rd year pictured with his year head Mr. Heffernan who received his Certificate of Achievement after he had successfully completed the Dermot Earley Youth Leadership Initiative. 

Our second year art students travelled to Nenagh Castle recently and engaged in the sketching of this 13th Century Structure.

This newly renovated castle is one of the finest cylindrical keeps in Ireland.

Nenagh Castle was built by Theobald Walter who was the first of the Butlers of Ormond.

It stands as a key heritage site for Nenagh Town

 

 

 

 

 

Filipe Olszewski, First Year Student and past-pupil of Nenagh CBS Primary, who made a presentation to guests and staff about his experiences in Nenagh College, with  Margaret McCabe and Margaret Hayes (Deputy Principal) Nenagh CBS Primary School with Student Council members, James Clifford and Laura Corcoran.

 

Nenagh College was pleased to hold an open evening for representatives from many of the local primary schools. We were privileged to have had Harry Freeman as our guest speaker for the evening.

 

 

Congratulations to our first year boys hurling team who recently competed in a Hurling Blitz on behalf of Nenagh College

Students took part in crystal growing competition over the last 3 weeks. Crystals were grown from salt, sugar, Epsom salts along with chemicals such as copper salts, ammonia molybdate, potassium sodium tartarate.

Students monitored their crystals very closely during the 3 weeks checking on the progress and changing the solutions on a continuous basis. As a result of this crystals were grown from tiny seeds crystals of 0.1g to crystals ranging from 1.5 – 3.8g. a very large crystal was also grown to 12.5g

Rory Grace of Nenagh College won the 1st year schools Munster Handball Championship on Saturday the 14th of November.

Mikey Heffernan, a teacher at Nenagh College, has been nominated for goal of the year on TG4.

Mikey is also a former Tipperary ETB student and has won All Ireland hurling medals at Vocational Schools level,Minor, U.21, Intermediate and Senior, bringing great honour to his school, club and county .

I would  ask you to encourage your staff and students to vote for Mikey’s goal by following the link below.

http://old.tg4.ie/hurling-h.html

 

Students from Nenagh College received the following awards on Friday 6th November:

Sean Bergin: Best Leaving Certificate Result in 2015 (615 points)

Nicole Byers Ryan: Personal Achievement

Brian Naughton: Sports

On Wednesday 14 October, Simon Tierney (of Newstalk and Communications  Officer with OCD Ireland) spoke to the Amber Flag team on the topic of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Mental Well-being.  As part of his tour of Ireland Simon hopes to create a national dialogue which is open and reflective. Students listened attentively and asked exploring questions in the demonstration room.  The quality of focus and questions highlighted the groups interest in mental health and their openness in discussing matters relating to mental health.

Afterwards Simon planted a tree at the front of Nenagh College as a memento of his visit and as a more permanent reminder of the condition that causes so much disruption in the lives of those afflicted by it.  We are very grateful to Simon for sharing his own experiences of OCD with us in his efforts to ensure that mental well-being is a topic for open discussion, especially in Nenagh College.   Plant a tree for OCD aims to raise awareness of the mental health illness.  Simons message is simple – ‘I found myself in the abyss and I came out again, I got better, and now I lead a normal, healthy life’ all this came about as a result of the help of talk therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy, Simon was able to learn how to deal with the illness. OCD affects 1-2% of the population  and this tree represents solidity, stability, shelter and growth. OCD Ireland offers information and support.

Simon was invited to launch Nenagh Colleges Amber Flag, which we are very proud to have received as a result of our efforts in creating events, workshops, discussions and talks for our students throughout last year.  Students got involved in the cycle against suicide event, the lunch time social club, the darkness into light walk in Killaloe, a 6 week fitness challenge, dramas on mental health, friendship events, anti-bullying awareness activities, leadership programmes, publications, community projects and much more. The team got to work early in the year, which culminated in Alan Quinlan presenting Ms O Keeffe and a representative group with the Amber Flag in Cork . The Amber flag is about promoting positive mental health, about developing strategies for dealing with the stresses of life.  The main message of the day is to become aware of oneself, to be grateful for all that we have, to eat healthy, to drink more water, to get daily exercise, to talk, to connect, to relax and get involved in meditation and mindfulness.  The College has an information notice board where it promotes websites like aware.ie, spunout, reachout.com and the all important one headspace – which has the meditation app which Bressie promotes in his school talks. Regardless how you feel right now, it too will pass.

Ms O Keeffe would like to acknowledge and thank Mr Kennedy, Ms Melley and all the staff for their support with positive mental health, she would like to welcome all new members including the support of two new teachers – Ms Quigley and Ms Murphy to our Amber Flag team 2015-2016.