Today the student council had the pleasure of welcoming Ed O'Brien, the Mayor of South Dublin County Council to our school. The Mayor was onsite to present our school with a box of Irish Wildflower Seed Bombs. The wildflower seed bombs will explode into growth, and develop into a beautiful display of colorful flora around our school when they are planted. Seed bombs will also create a wonderful wildlife friendly habitat for our country's pollinating insects. BEES! How cool is that! Making our school grounds look lovely and also giving a helping hand to nature. CLASS! 

​It was our first official engagement as student council, to meet and host an elected member of South Dublin County Council, to represent the students of our school and to have our photo taken by the ECHO. Lots of excitement and a little bit of nerves but boy did we do our school proud! As the grown up in the student council I was so proud them. They were fantastic. Interested, respectful, inquisitive, mature and most of all eager to talk about the roles and responsibilities members of the student council have. The Mayor asked a simple question..."what does student council do", I don't think he was prepared for the amount of answers and information he got back. We ran 15 minutes over time! 

Take a look at some of our photos from the event.....
Prep talk to calm the nerves.

Greeting the press.

Meeting with the Mayor.

Official photo for the local paper - The ECHO

Getting ready for our close ups.

Finally, the people who made it happen.

COMING SOON - DON'T FORGET TO CHECK OUT OUR EVENT AND PHOTOS IN THE ECHO!

Next week the S.C are meeting with Caitríona to put forward some of the proposals we have come up with.  It's the first time in our term as Student Council to do so.  A little bit of prep was involved - how to represent your class and school, how to address a person formally, how to put forward your proposal  accurately and how to get over the obvious nerves!
Having listened to everyone speak I know we'll nail it on the day! 

Just as we were getting into the swing of things, lock down happened again and we didn't get return to school after our winter break for what seemed like ages!  Finally we're back on track!  We've had a few meetings since then and normality has been restored.  
Lots of ideas/suggestions are in the pipeline.  We are still working on the project we were doing before the closure but now we have some more proposals.  Watch this space! 

Check out some of our cool and colourful rock designs! 

Much to our delight, the Students Council's first proposal has been approved. We are delighted and excited to witness it taking place in the different classrooms around the school! 

We are proud to finally reveal our idea.....

We are opening up the 'Our School Rocks' project to the school as a whole. For those of you who are not familiar with this, during the school closure earlier this year, some children/families painted, decorated and designed different rocks and placed them either close to the school grounds or around where they live.  Here is the link from our website if you want to have a look - https://www.citywestetns.ie/parents-assocation/our-school-rocks
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​The SC proposed our school community to do the same but this time display the rocks around the plant beds near the soft play area/outdoor classroom area within our school grounds. Each class will have the opportunity to collect, paint, decorate and display their individual rocks.

Finally..... IT'S GOING TO ROCK!

We've just sent our first approved proposal to our school!! It's so exciting and we can't wait to see how the teachers,children and families will respond to it! We've spent the last two meetings drafting, editing and finalising how we wanted our idea to be submitted for approval and presented to each class.  We also spent some time mapping out the logic's of our suggestion.  It's currently a work in progress so stay tuned.........

We had our second meeting today and it felt like we had found a natural, respectful and productive way to go about our business already! We just seemed to get into a lovey groove so to speak!  M from 4th class was eager to share her feedback from her class, A and A (representing 5th) told us all their ideas on possible future events we could organise, A in 4th came up with some fabulous suggestions we could do instead of the previous end of term discos. The rest of the gang had lots to say too!  

We have a few ideas in the pipeline so......watch this space!

Today the SC met for the first time as a group in the P.E hall. I had planned to spend a little bit of time having to organise the social distancing seating arrangements (I even brought a metre stick with me) but the children came in and naturally did it themselves!  I'm already loving this group! 
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So today's meeting was just about getting to know each other as a group and having a chat about what the Student Council does. We'll get deeper into the in's and out's of our role and responsibilities over the next couple of weeks. 

Here are some of the answers I received when I asked the children what they
​thought the SC does:

'Plan events for the school'
'Try to make our school a better place'
'Try to make our school more fun'
'Fund raising'
'Make the school better'
'Help people make friends'
'Raise money for P.E, books and toys'
'Make great decisions'
'Toys for the playground'  
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We also spent a little bit of time acknowledging that our usual and staple fundraising activities might not be able to take place this year due to Covid 19, not to get disheartened if our suggestions are not taken up and to relish the challenge/opportunity to be more creative with our ideas! 

On Friday during assembly, Caitríona officially announced the new members of the Student Council.  As Caitríona called out their names, the children representing each class level stood up in front of the camera and waved to the whole school.  

Introducing the Student Council representatives for Emer's and Sarah C's first class.

I had to put in this photo just to show the emotions of being elected. Pride, joy, shock and happiness to name just a few! 

Fair play Andrea on capturing such a special moment for one of the children in our school! 

Over the past few weeks classes from 1st to 5th have been busy electing a representative to become a member of the Student Council for 2020 - 2021.  Students put themselves forward, canvassed to their peers and elections took place across the school.  This year we have 2 representatives from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th class presiding on the council.  That's 10 members in total.  The results of the election will be announced this week at our Friday assembly and  we will meet every Wednesday as a group. 
I can't spoil the surprise so you'll just have to wait until it is announced to find out who the new members are. 
You can take a look at some of the pictures of the election process though!