In September 2014, we moved up into the top floor of the building, occupying three rooms. Initially the rooms served as a 1st class room, a 2nd class room and a PE Hall, given that we had outgrown our previous Hall and built a school office in one corner of it - does anyone remember the first two years when the school office was in the small Junior Infant classroom where Orla is now teaching?!
We had some fun carrying all the gym equipment up those stairs - this was back in the days before we had a functioning lift so it was all people power! And who remembers when we cable-tied numerous IWB rostra to make a stage and created paper stage curtains for the winter concert up there?!
We will never forget bringing our little Junior Infants (who are now big 2nd class pupils!) all the way up for their PE lessons - it would take so long to get up and down the stairs on their little legs!
It took us some time too to get used to the dormer wall - sure each of us only bumped our head once and we learned after that to stop a few feet from the edge of the room!
It was a funny situation having a PE Hall on the 2nd floor of the building but we felt very lucky to have a PE Hall at all. Not too many schools in temporary accommodation have that privilege.
We were so lucky to get an even better, new-and-improved PE Hall the following year, in November 2015, when we moved out into the front of the building, and the room that had been our PE Hall became a very large classroom for two years - Mary taught our current 5th class there when they were in 3rd class and she taught Eldon's current 3rd class there when they were in 2nd class. It was some task to fill those endless walls with displays but Mary and her pupils were always up to the challenge!
As we graduate out into the front of the school, we are so pleased with the high spec of the new classrooms and relieved to once again, as we were 4 years ago when we had under 100 pupils, have only one storey of stairs to climb numerous times a day.
Nevertheless, we leave behind some very special memories from years that have been historical for our school. We wish Citywest and Saggart CNS just as many good and happy memories in the rooms and hope they enjoy the quirky spaces as much as we did.