Education Ireland Project #62960

Centre of Excellence for Self Directed Education

by North West Democratic School

Centre of Excellence for Self Directed Education

Project Report | Dec 29, 2024
December 2024

By Maura Duignan | Staff Member

As the year comes to a close, we take a moment to reflect on all that has happened over the past months. At the end of each term we encourage all of our staff and students to take the time to reflect on our experiences of community, freedom, and responsibility, celebrating our achievements, learning from challenges, and enjoying the memories. We savour this quiet moment of reflection before anticipating the excitement and opportunities that the year ahead will bring. So, please enjoy this taste of what went on during December.

One of the recent highlights was Grandparents Day. A group of students had the brilliant idea to invite their grandparents to school and requested permission from the School Meeting to organise a Grandparents Day. We had 14 grandparents visit. They were given a tour by their grandchild and welcomed to watch or join in some of the activities at school. One Grandmother facilitated a baking activity with the children. It was a fantastic day and we hope to do another again soon.

We’d like to extend a huge thank you to Aine and Pamela, two of our amazing parents, for organising some fantastic fundraising events over the past few months. Thanks to their efforts, a total of €1,124 has been raised! Their initiatives included hosting several coffee mornings and a community Christmas Market, which not only brought people together to socialise and share skills but also raised much-needed funds. We’d also like to thank Iida-Leena, another wonderful parent, for volunteering her time and expertise. She hosted a Breathwork session for parents and generously donated the proceeds to the school build fund. You can find out more about Iida-Leena's work here.

A big thank you also to Susan, one of our generous supporters, for donating baby Chinese Money Plants and Christmas Cacti. The sale of these beautiful plants has contributed vital funds to our school’s development. We are incredibly grateful for every contribution, no matter how small—every little bit helps.

Thank you all so much for your ongoing support! We couldn't do what we do without the generous support of our sponsors, donors, and volunteers. We appreciate all the help, encouragement, and support we have received and work very hard to ensure that your support goes where it is most needed. With your continued help, we hope that we can continue to provide an opportunity for children to reach their full potential, empowered by self-directed education. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

We wish you a peaceful end to 2024, and may 2025 bring happiness, health, and prosperity to all.

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Sep 12, 2024
September 2024

By Maura Duignan | Staff Member

Xavi

The start of our new school year is a time of great excitment. Everyone LOVES returning to school, seeing their friends again, sharing stories, getting stuck into projects, and making new plans. We also have a new staff member joining our team this year. Xavier Villas Navarro is from Spain. He and his family have relocated to Sligo to join our self-directed democratic school community.

Xavier brings a wealth of skills to our staff team from Spanish language, music and art, to technology, engineering and maths. He has extensive programming experience and he enjoys teaching technology to children through play using educational gadgets, including BBC Micro:bit SBCs, actuators, connectors, expansion boards, and a small Maqueen robot. He loves that you can now create many functional and practical projects on a very limited budget.

Expansion of the school buildings and facilities is urgently needed to meet the demand for places and to continue the growth and development of this model of education. Fundraising for our ambitious building project is ongoing while our architect team is working on Stage 4 (Detail Design/ Building Plans) of the new Sports Hall with a view to constructing this in the first part of a phased approach to building. The Sports Hall will provide a variety of indoor and outdoor / sheltered spaces, and will be a more quickly realizable first step in the overall building proposal.

We look forward to sharing further updates with you over the coming year. Sincere thanks to all of our supporters to date.

Would you be interested in joining this pioneering project and helping to build a new school? Together we can build a brighter, fairer and more sustainable future. In order to complete the build, the school needs to raise €4,000,000 from benefactors like you.

Please share this opportunity with your colleagues, friends and family and help to reach the goal of €4,000,000!!

Thank you, as always, for your continued support!

Links:

First Day of the new school year September 2024

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May 22, 2024
May 2024

By Maura Duignan | Staff Member

We are so inspired by the energy and motivation of our students every day. In these recent months we have enjoyed drama, crochet, coding, cooking, and much much more. Students choose to plan their days and school activities through creating weekly schedules together with staff and mentors. In this way they progress their learning goals and are free to develop as they wish.

As always there is plenty of fun and games together with the more serious projects. We have loved face painting, making mix tapes, designing album covers, playing 4 square, tip the can, and jumping on the trampoline.

Some of our students are getting ready to graduate this year and have completed their graduation portfolios.

One of the most recent highlits was the trip to visit Microsoft in Dublin. On May 15th, us seven Dreamspace Ambassadors awoke very early in the morning to embark on a journey to Dublin to attend our Dreamspace Graduation in the Microsoft building in South Dublin. We have been training with Microsoft since October, using their Microbit and MakeCode Arcade Coding programmes, coding with Minecraft Education and learning all about Internet Safety. As part of the Ambassador programme, we shared our skills with the community by holding coding clinics and competitions and attending live coding events with Microsoft. The last few months have given us the opportunity to access the world of coding by making games, animations and simulations. We have also learned a lot about AI. On the graduation day, we created self-driving robot routes and made our own Minecraft characters. Our favourite part was working together and using the Indi car. We ended up winning the Platinum award for our hard work and are very proud of ourselves!

Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to developing our school further and continuing to provide children with a self-directed and democratic educational space into the future.

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