Dear students, parents, teachers and friends,
We wish to express our sincere gratitude to all for the continuity of Teaching and Learning in these unprecedented times. Thank you to the students for your super efforts over the last few weeks. We appreciate how difficult it is to motivate yourselves but you have shown your resilience in abundance to date, despite all of the external pressures to your families. To you the parents, a huge thank you for your continued support in monitoring and encouraging your child to access, complete and submit work to teachers, ensuring that the daily contact is kept intact. A massive thank you also to the teachers- this has been such a steep learning curve for us all and you are highly commended for your approach and adaptation to on-line teaching, ensuring that the student’s education and welfare are still to the forefront. Of course we also wish to acknowledge the work in the background done by our admin staff, caretaker and cleaners to keep everything moving too.
Despite Thursday’s announcement by an Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, that the State exams will go ahead, it is important that everyone takes a well-deserved break over the Easter holidays, as the stress of the last few weeks will have taken its toll on all of us. This should be adhered to, especially by the exam classes, as you still have many weeks of continued revision and study before the exam dates will be finalised. While teachers have set work or revision schedules for the exam classes, they too will be taking a break over the next two weeks, so please be mindful of their need to spend time with their families in these extraordinary times.
For those students who did not manage to engage so well in the first week or two of school closure, remember that you can check into your emails, schoolology and online resources, and you can use these weeks to catch up on what you have missed to date.
During the holidays if there are any changes or updates to our school situation, or if the Minister gives any update on the exams we will email students, and put notices up here on the website. Please also watch for our twitter posts for information, fun challenges and interesting bits of news about our school community.
As we are reminded by Chief Medical Officer we are entering the surge phase of this pandemic, and so we are likely to hear of teachers, students and family members who have become ill, and if so, you may be advised that a teacher is not available. If any student or parent becomes unwell we would ask that you advise the school by emailing colaisteclavin@lmetb.ie. This is a stressful time for everyone and it will be important that everyone has the time and space to recover and feel supported by whole school community. Hopefully this will not occur, but it is important that we all know how to deal with it just in case it does.
In the event of schools not reopening immediately after the Easter Holiday, on-line classes and allocation of work will resume on Monday the 20th April for all students. Together we will work steadily toward the exams, and whatever challenges lies before us.
When the dust settles from all of this we will realise how little we need, how much we actually have and the true value of human connection. We want to acknowledge and thank those members of the school community who are working on the front line and appreciate the sacrifices that you are making for us all. We wish you and the entire Coláiste Clavin community a very safe Easter break. We remind you to take care of each other, and to stay at home, by doing so it could save lives.
Best wishes,
Margaret Deegan (Principal)
Orla Mc Bride (Deputy Principal)
