Food and football on the brain at St. Aidan's

Enterprising minds Once again, all Transition Year students in St. Aidan's are involved in the Student Enterprise Awards in conjunction with the Cavan County Enterprise Board. This programme focuses on developing students' entrepreneurial skills and abilities and is supported by excellent student and teacher resources. The TY class has formed eight individual enterprise groups for the purpose of this module and competition. Several groups must have been hungry when brainstorming for enterprising ideas, as food and drink products are very well represented. The staff and students of the school have never had such an extensive choice of delicious culinary products such as toasted sandwiches, hot chocolate, ice cream, pancakes, smoothies, freshly-baked buns and cakes, popcorn and candy floss! The groups involved are "Bakery Bliss", "Hot 'n Cold" and "Lunch Attack". In order to burn off the excess calories consumed, students can compete in football target shooting as organised by "Shoot 'n Score". Exams are looming ever closer and one group has the exam students targeted as their potential consumers - the "Revision Book Company" is working on revision booklets for Junior Cert students. Valentine's Day is around the corner and the "Love is in the Air" group has this market all wrapped up with their range of Valentine's products. TY students can also avail of lovely personalised TY hoodies as sourced by the "TY Hoodies" group. Meanwhile, "TY Radio" continues to rock the school during lunchtimes and streams live to the Internet. Go to www.staidans.ie for a link to the live show and to hear pod casts. There is a Facebook page where communications from as far away as Australia have been received! These TY young entrepreneurs are learning valuable lessons about starting and running a business - a skill that is critical in these difficult economic times. They are looking forward to competing in the regional competition in the Slieve Russell Hotel on Wednesday, March 3. Senior boys basketball Well done to the senior basketball team who were crowned North East region basketball champions for the second year in a row. St. Aidan's beat a highly fancied Our Lady's team from Castleblaney in the final. They are now through to the All-Ireland quarter finals of the competition in the national arena, Dublin on February 2, so the very best of luck to them. The panel is Darren Tiernan, Eoghan Hillis, Ronan Mc Donald, Killian Brady, Liam Keane, Anthony Brady, Renaldas Antanavicius, Kieran Scorr, Audraus Aukstakis, Liam Gaffney and Vicent Yip. Art attack The art department of St. Aidan's recently hosted a visit to the school by renowned artist John Blakey. The talk was attended by fifth and sixth year art students and was organised by Mr. Pat Lynch. John Blakey is known for his painting of the well-known and famous but has recently been using for his subject the people and places of Cootehill. The talk was well received by the students and Mr. Blakey showed examples of his paintings (such as that above). Students were able to recognise many of the images in his work. Students also learnt about how disciplined an artist must be to be successful and the materials and methods used to create a work of art. Careers Leaving Certs have been busy over the last few weeks researching course options in the UK and Ireland. A large number of colleges were invited to the school by the career guidance counsellor, Ms O'Rourke, to give presentations to the sixth years. This combined with their visit to the Higher Options has helped to clarify the choices available. Students completed both UCAS and CAO on-line and are now focused on working to achieve the entry course and points requirements in their chosen areas. Spring bulbs fundraiser The Agriculture and Horticulture module in the LCA course badly needs a poly-tunnel to allow the students to grow plants from seed. The LCA 2 class, along with their teacher Ms. Corbett, decided to fundraise to purchase a poly-tunnel or greenhouse. They ran a fundraising campaign with the Mr. Middleton's garden shop and sold spring bulbs. The school receives 50% of the total amount sold. This year we sold a total of €1,402, so the school receives €701 towards the poly-tunnel fund. This was an excellent accomplishment for the LCA 2 class. The work and effort put in by the students to organise this campaign was massive and is greatly appreciated by their teacher and the school. Congratulations Well done to the public speaking team who made the Cavan finals of the Mental Health Public Speaking Competition 2009 in Bailieborough. The team spoke very well on the topic of 'It's tough being a teenager'. Representing St. Aidan's were Sinead McEntee, Adam Hobson and Sarah McComish, with their teacher Ms. Benton. Halloween Madness Halloween fever hit St. Aidan's on the last day before mid-term. Some of students had the great idea of having a Halloween fancy-dress day in order to raise some much needed funds in order to buy sports equipment. A lot of the students got right into the spirit of things by designing various types of costumes. U-16 girls football The U-16 girls are in a three-way play-off to find out who tops the group and ultimately decide who goes through to the knock out stages of the Ulster competition. So, the very best of luck to them in their game. Badminton Well done to all pupils who took part in the junior doubles competition in Cavan complex. St. Aidan's Cootehill enjoyed another successful day once again. Out of the four finals that took place, the pupils won three. Senior boys shield winners These two lads were originally brought to the competition to take scores but, were invited into the competition to make up the teams. Jonathan and Alex ended up winning the senior shield. Well done to both of them. Also, congratulations to Lyndsay McKay and Deirdre Mahon on winning the senior girls shield.