Creative students do their bit for the Irish language

THE Irish language is alive and well in the inner city with students at a local school playing their part.

A third year class at Mount Carmel Secondary School, based on King’s Inn Street, recently launched a book entitled

‘Celebs’ as Gaeilge.

Lord Mayor of Dublin Christy Burke and Equality Minister Aodhán � Ríordáin officially launched the book which was written and illustrated by the talented group of students.

Courtney White, one of the authors, said:

“We came up with the idea in our Irish class when we started off doing celebrity profiles as revision.

“Our Irish teacher Ms Michelle Cassidy said when she walked into the classroom every day that all everyone was ever talking about was celebrities.

“All she would hear every day was something like:

‘Did you see Kim Kardashian’s shoes last night, they were fabulous!’

“So she decided to combine our love of celebrities with her love of Irish. We did some research on the computers and put together a series of profiles.

“Then our teacher thought she would make it into a booklet by putting a binder and a plastic cover on it.

?

According to Courtney, the school’s librarian Ms Mairéad Duggan decided to take it to the next level.

“And here we are with our first published book and I think it looks great and we are so proud of it,

? Courtney added.

Mount Carmel Secondary School is fortunate to have the support of the library project.

The Junior Certificate School Programme (JCSP) Library Project is currently operating in 30 DEIS schools across the country.

These libraries are active, creative learning spaces designed to improve the literacy levels of all students but particularly, to enhance the learning experience of at-risk teenagers.

All of the libraries have long-established programmes of conventional literacy-based classes and activities.

This year one of the many creative projects was the production of the high-quality Irish language workbook. It is hoped that the initiative will be now be taken up by the JCSP and distributed to schools across the country.