This week we had the 30th Transition Year English Evening, the longest-established TY event in the College. It was planned primarily as a celebration of pupil work across the year, with an external guest speaker. There is no competitive element.
This year we were delighted to welcome back a former teacher, Mr Paul Reidy, who has been working at St Andrew’s College in Booterstown for 26 years, where he is head of Senior Cycle English. The event was compèred by Mr Kirwan.
There were eight readers of their work from the four sets; Mr Reidy’s comments on them follow each in brackets. Anna Hart kicked off with a narrative piece called ‘The Watcher’ (full of atmosphere and detail, tense and capturing fear very well, with a twist at the end). She was followed by Kayra Mbanefo with ‘The City That Dreams’ (a vivid phrase in the description was ‘like brushstrokes on a canvas’). Third was Issac Fang with ‘The Hidden Book’, a dense and interesting piece on body/mind (intriguing, getting across the thoughts of a teeming brain). As a total contrast, Isobel McKinley wrote ‘Testimonies’, an honest and personal piece about her relationship with religion (writing about character growth in a way which was gently wise).
Lexi Hunter’s ‘Underwater’ was a highly descriptive essay (very well written, with a strong sense of colour and cinematic). Alice Castagna’s ‘The Pulse of the Unknown’ on her time in London was next (a strong sense of nostalgia, and very good on the sounds and smells of the city), followed by Alice McCarthy with ‘Animal Farm at School’ (a version of the novel which was very humorous, with a touch of Lord of the Flies). Finally, Ferdia Murray provoked lots of laughter with ‘My First Love’, which started with lots of suggestive images which revealed themselves as references to his air fryer (very funny).
Mr Reidy then spoke a little about his time in the College from 1994 to 1996, his moving on to work for Concern in Rwanda, and then his return to teaching, which has become his career. It is indeed, he stated, a privilege to be a teacher, helping children learn. He concluded by reading out the names of the pupils who were awarded Premier grades this year,