Foreign Film Night

A well chosen "Woman on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown" gave us an admittedly dark but very funny close to our Foreign Film season. As ever, the languages committee was on hand to serve up tea, coffee, popcorn, biscuits and sweeties. Look out for the next date, on which we intend to branch out east and go for an Eastern European film. Look out for the consultation fliers for a community cinema in Newcastle. Shimna would be happy to host it in its early days, and the Newcastle 2000 Gateway project has space for a cinema in the plans for the swimming pool and community centre.

International Again

We have just heard that we have passed the first stage of our bid to win the International Schools Award for the second time. Everyone in Shimna contributes to our International Schools work, but Clare Murphy, our wonderful Languages and International Co-ordinator pulls it all together and makes us fit to receive our Award. Thank you Clare.

More First Aid

St John's Ambulance Brigade Cadet Stephen Polson has passed a weekend residential course in leadership; which will allow him to progress to Cadet NCO in the near future, another Cadet from Lagan College also passed this course. Stephen along with Andrew Polson and new Cadet Dylan Russell passed the Young Life Saver Plus course in the last week. It's really good to keep up with this kind of news of student success outside as well as inside school.

NICIE AGM

We went up to Hazelwood Integrated College to attend the AGM of the Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education. It was an inspiring night, with an address from Ciarnan Helferty, an Old Scholar of Oakgrove Integrated College, who shared his experience of going on to university from an integrated school rather than a segregated one. He made a persuasive case for the value of integrated schools, and pointed out that it is only later, when you realise there are still so many young people in Northern Ireland who never meet anyone from the other community. The second presentation was by Tony McCauley, who has led our training days in Shimna. He presented his very practical plan for bringing down the Peace Walls in Belfast, with community support. As he pointed out, the Peace Walls in Belfast, and all the other divided towns, have survived the Berlin wall. Within the integrated community, Hazelwood Integrated Primary School has ended up with a Peace Wall right through its grounds. An inspiring night.

The Weirdest Trip

Our A level Travel and Tourism group organised to take our A level Business Studies students on a trip, and they chose Predator Games as their destination. Very weird! How did you all get on?

Nathan Wins

Remember the NI Stroke Association competition which went out with our last newsletter? Well Nathan Burden won, and now has a DV8 voucher to ease his Christmas spending. Well done Nathan.

Never Mind Jordan, We Saw Ben

Jordan may have been the life and soul of hypnotism at the formal, but we saw brother Ben leading the YMCA performance in the middle of Newcastle for Hallow E'en. Look to your performance laurels, Jordan.