Memorable time for students at St Peter’s
It has been a memorable time for students at St Peter’s Catholic School Bournemouth with a trip to Oxford and continuing work on the Lasallian Awards among the many highlights.
Lasallian Awards
Students are putting together the final touches for their Lasallian Bronze Awards. We have introduced the Lasallian Awards for the first time this year, encouraging our Lasallian Leaders to all work towards their first award. They have engaged in lots of different activities both inside and outside school.
Some of our favourite activities were writing letters of thanks to school staff, researching the history of local Churches and learning new languages and new skills. We were even treated to a lunchtime gymnastics display, as one student had spent two weeks practising and perfecting her ‘hand stand talents’ as one of her activities to develop new skills and talents!
Oxford trip
On Thursday 9th March 2023, 14 of our St Peter’s students went on a Philosophy day trip to Oxford Town Hall and Keble College. They were Vitoria Caetano, Charley Carter, Ben Coleman, Sasha Dale, Georgie Devereux, Harry Dias, Isabella Fiorillo, Aoife Fitzsimmons, Rio Golding, Julia Gorska, Georgia King, Anna Mills, Natalie Palascakova, Vianci Rumao. We all got up super early on the day and began our journey at 7am. We travelled to Oxford by a minibus driven by Mr. Herford himself and we were accompanied by one of our school nurses, Peggy Pearson (as you will see later – Henry’s Mum). We arrived at 10am to the beautiful Oxford Town Hall which stunned us all.
We received four fascinating lectures. The first lecture was titled ‘Justice Truth, Beauty, and Maths’ which opened our minds to think in all perspectives on beauty and what it truly is. The second lecture was all about answering Oxbridge interview questions, so we were shown examples of questions that have previously appeared in Oxford and Cambridge university entrance interviews. The presenter, Julie Arliss really presented to us how deeply you must think into the simple and random questions you are likely to receive. We then had a short break and continued into the next lecture – ‘The Psychology of Outstanding Achievement’. In this lecture they talked about the four stages of achieving your goals and becoming the best version of yourself.
After lunch we had a debate about whether it should or shouldn’t be okay to make comments on other people's bodies. It was very interesting to see how many students from different schools came up to the microphone to all make different points on this topic. One of our students took part in the debate and did a good job of being confident enough to stand in front of a full town hall and speak out.
We then had our last lecture about Rock in 11 Dimensions: Where Physics and Guitars Collide by a physics professor who is also an amazing guitarist who performed some solos to us and talked about the physics side behind the guitar and its strings. The lectures ended at 3pm and we left the Town Hall and walked through the Oxford city centre in the pouring rain all the way down to Keble College where we met a past pupil of St Peter’s School who now studies at Oxford University – Henry Pearson, reading Archaeology and Anthropology.
Henry kindly gave us a tour through the gorgeous buildings of the well-known and prestigious Keble College. We went inside the so-called chapel which was so gorgeous and beautiful that it was hard to believe it was just a chapel and not a church, we got to see the priceless painting (The Light of the World) kept inside a side chapel. Only 2 people were allowed to view it at once. Henry guided us around the campus and showed us the dining hall and the dormitories. We asked him many questions about studying at Oxford and how he managed to get in and received a lot of information and stories from him.
We then walked back to our minibus, passing through some really pretty streets of the city and were on our way home. On the way back, we stopped at a McDonald's and had great fun. We also only found out on the bus journey home that it was Mr. Herford's birthday, so we sang him a happy birthday. The trip was 14 hours of great memories. Thank you, Sir, for making this day possible; we all learnt lots of new things and it created great memories.
Julia Gorska 10Magdalene