St Helens school looking after teacher wellbeing
Due to the challenges of the covid pandemic, St Helens De La Salle School have introduced an initiative to help teacher wellbeing. Read on for more details about this and other activities.
Tea, Toast and Time Together
Following the Covid Pandemic, something that we felt was incredibly important for staff was that opportunity to socialise, and spend time relaxing over a hot cup of tea. Each week in Chapel, we host a ‘toast club’ for staff who are able to attend. This is a real moment of togetherness as people from all departments gather to chat, celebrate special occasions, and catch-up before they continue their busy school days.
On September 24th we used this time to mark our ‘Macmillan Coffee Morning’ and raised over £200 for those in need of Macmillan support. Staff from across the school put their baking skills to the test and brought in a huge display of cakes and treats for us to buy and sell. We had to give special recognition to Mr Heyes for his ‘fat-free’ and ‘dairy-free’ cake, that was enjoyed by many!
Our wonderful senior prefects, the 1719 Society helped to offer a delivery service to those members of staff who were not able to bring their contribution in exchange for cakes. This was hugely successful and there were nothing but compliments of the great service our students offered to all!
We look forward to the continuation of our ‘toast club’ and the many conversations and events to come.
Chaplaincy Team
October saw the reintroduction of a school Chaplaincy Team, a small dedicated group of students who will support in the organisation of community masses in the new year, create a chaplaincy newsletter, and work alongside the Student Support team within our 1719 Society.
Many Year 7 students wrote in, to explain why they felt called to be a member of the Chaplaincy team, and with an overwhelming response, and willingness from the year group, we were able to select 7 students to represent the year group. The group shared a collective view that they wanted the be the young people who were able to bring their peers closer to God, and help people find the support they need within Chaplaincy.
We gathered as a group to receive badges that would identify us as members of this team, and had a small prayer service all about God’s plans and wishes for us and our lives.
A huge role of the Chaplaincy team members is to be a visible presence around school, supporting students, groups, and movements. Over the coming weeks, the Chaplaincy team will be supporting the school Diversity Group by selling coloured ribbons, in aid of mental health awareness, and earth week, in a bid to raise funds for MIND, the mental health organisation.
As well as the year 7 students, we have a number of year 9 and year 11 students who support the work that takes place in Chaplaincy. Each break and lunch time, we host a number of activities for students across the school that sees us welcoming around 40-50 students each day. Throughout the week students can enjoy time as part of the ‘Lasallian Social’ which is a space for all year groups to meet and socialise, whilst playing games, listening to music, and chatting. We also have Meditation each Wednesday, and the Good Samaritan group each Thursday that meet to help out with different activities across the school.
A key role within the Chaplaincy team is volunteering for ‘De La Duty’, each day a member of the team is responsible for ensuring that Chapel is used respectfully, they will also pay particular attention to the people within Chapel and are there to offer support, help, or a listening ear. This role helps to foster leadership skills, compassion, and a respect for all within our school community.
I am excited to see where the year takes our Chaplaincy team, with a retreat planned for the start of the upcoming year, we are delighted to be working together to raise the profile of Chaplaincy and give people a space to come and be their true, authentic self.
Teardrops
Here at De La Salle, we have an incredibly strong link with the local Foodbank and Support Hub, Teardrops.
Teardrops works hard to support vulnerable members of the community. Service users here are supported through any financial hardship, addiction, homelessness, domestic incidences, or general wrap-around care that they may need. As a school we support the work of Teardrop by having regular collections of food, toiletries and clothes to support the centre.
One of our new year 7 students, Katie, has recently been given huge acknowledgement for her role as a young ambassador at the Teardrops Hub. Katie and her mum have been working hard over the last 18 months to make their mark and help support those who are in need. Katie has baked numerous cakes and treats for service users, helped with packing and wrapping food hampers at Christmas time, and most recently, created promotional materials for the foodbank collection trollies within our local supermarkets. We are proud of the work that Katie has done and will continue to do in the future to tackle the homelessness crisis – this is something she is so passionate about.
Following a series of Lockdowns, we are working hard to strengthen the relationship between the hub and school, and will be involved in a number of events throughout the year to raise the profile of Teardrops within the school community. As part of our Lasallian Days for Peace, we have been thinking about how we can bring peace into the lives of others, and decided that sometimes giving somebody something that we take for granted would be a good place to start.
Working in partnership with Teardrops, we supported ‘World Homeless Day’ on the 10th October by having a collection of toiletries. This is a household item that we take for granted – something that we deem an absolute essential (and rightly so), but we were hard-hit by this idea that so many people within the community do not have access to shower gel, shampoo, or deodorant. We explored the impact of this on people’s sense of dignity and pride, and so decided that collecting toiletry items was a small gesture that would help those in need.
Groups of year 7 and year 11 students took part in a mass collection, and on Friday 8th October, our students took boxes to every form class to collect items that had been brought in. We were blown away by the generosity of the staff, students and parents. We give thanks for their efforts and hope that their gifts and donations were able to help many members of our community.
Different initiatives that we’re working with Teardrops on now include: Wear Something Bright and Shine a Light…on those less fortunate; Tree of Hope; Creating Donation Baubles; Foodbank collections; further collections over the coming months.
We give thanks for the work of Teardrops, and are honoured to be invited to play our part in serving the members of our community.
Earth Week
The 1719 Society are running an Earth Week to acknowledge COP26 from November 15th to 19th with a different activity on each day to help raise awareness on climate change.
