Thank You Transition Year! – My Year in Review

As my Transition Year in Crana College draws to a close, I look back on one of the most interesting and inspiring times in my school life. The year has by far exceeded any expectations that I ever had, encompassing everything and anything inside the Irish Education System.

I think that it is fair to say, that I had an action-packed, yet educational year in TY. Like many other skeptics, I came into the year, with an idea of prejudice in my head, thinking that the year didn’t yield any opportunities or chances for me, and I couldn’t have been further wrong! Within a matter of weeks, I realised that TY In Crana College (and in many other hard working schools around the country) is one of the best organised programmes, that aims to get the most out of each and every student, based on the effort and commitment that the students dedicate to the programme.

Transition Year, has improved me for the better. I have became a lot more confident in this year. Through this, I have countless unforgettable memories, but of these, the most prominent include:

Speaking on behalf of TY Ireland at the National Parents Council of Post Primary Secondary Schools annual conference in the INEC, Killarney.

Participating in the 5K Mud Run!

Making the Eir Junior Spiders – Giga Spiders – Best Induvidual Project Shortlist.

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Being ‘Highly Commended’ in the National Career Skills Competition with CareersPortal.ie 

Transition Year has been simply, amazing, and has made me much more ‘well-rounded’, and confident person. I feel that this year has benefited me greatly, and that I have taken every opportunity possible to get the very best out of this year. I would urge any student who is doing TY next year, to firstly, push themselves in TY, secondly, take every opportunity available to you, and thirdly, enjoy TY – It will be amazing!

Above, is only a snapshot of what has being going on in my Transition Year! I’m sure that if you were to read through this blog, or my Twitter Feed, you would see a much bigger picture of what my Transition Year was all about.

Writing one of my final blog posts of TY has really saddened me, not only has this blog been an ongoing assessed piece of work for my Media Studies Module, but it has been a space where I can freely write about a topic that I have grown to love! A special thanks has to be given to absolutely everyone who have supported me in this journey – My TY Coordinator, Teachers, Staff, Employers, Co-Workers, Transition Year Ireland, Volunteers, Guest-Speakers, Fellow Bloggers & Twitter Users, Family & Friends , and everyone in between- each and every one of you have helped make my TY that extra bit more special!

Thank you Transition Year!

The Eir Junior Spiders Shortlist

TY’s at the Colosseum

The TY Boys Walking in Sorrento

The Trevi Fountain

The Colosseum

Me & Ciarán Touring Rome

5th Years at the Amalfi Coast

The Amalfi Coast

The Streets of Sorrento

‘Rome’-ing about with Roisín & Tiree

The TY Boys on a Boat Trip

Selfies at the Trevi Fountain

Outside St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican

‘Frescos’ in the Vatican

The Time Elevator

Subject Choices for Leaving Certificate 2018

TY First Aid Training

Promoting Inishowen’s Tourism Industry

Skiing Tour Key Ring Design

Rome Tour Key Ring Design

My Cover of ‘O Fortuna’

Starting the Architecture Module!

Me and my little sister Dearbhla, pictured just after my last day at work experience at her “Big School”

My ‘Space Study’ for Architecture

Blog Challenge – Six Word Story

Ice Skating in Belfast

Hill Walking Trip

Hill Walking in Uriris

Christmas Market Poster

Drugs & Alcohol Conference

Disability Awareness Module Part 1

Our Greatest Scientist – Nikola Tesla

Completion of the Cube Project

TY Panel at the National Parents Council Post Primary Annual Conference in the INEC, Killarney

TY Panel at NPCpp Annual Conference

‘Chain Reaction’ Key Rings – TY Enterprise Mini Company

Semi-Completed Cube

Prize-giving – Co-Junior Student of the Year 2014/2015 & Co-Recipient of the ‘Bríd Boner Memorial Plaque’

TY Panel at the National Parents Council of Post Primary Secondary Schools

Irish Wheelchair Association Collection

What I’ve been learning about in TY Geography – The Human Development Index (HDI)

‘Chain reaction Keyring’s’ first product!

Oisín i dTír na nÓg – Mindmap

TY Panel at National Parents Council

Month In Review – October

My Work Experience Report, written in ‘The Drumfries Times’

Monthl

Foyle Hospice Coffee Morning Donation

National Road Safety Week

Ireland Trip

TY1 Post-Surfing Selfie

Cube Project

Surifng

Surfing

Foyle Hospice Coffee Morning

Cube Project

Music Appreciation Module

Room 13 – Pre-Coffee Morning Setup

TY1 Receiving the iPads

Junior Cert Results

Irish Mythology presentation

European Day Of Languages

 

My Experiences with Transition Year Road Safety – Topic Review: Alcohol & Driving

Alcohol & Driving: The Effects, Perceptions and Opinions

Road Safety, is one of the 14 modules, that I study in Transition Year, and it is a subject that is totally new to me, as there is no topic like ‘Road Safety’ on either the Junior Certificate or Leaving Certificate curriculum. The subject is extremely interesting and thought-provoking, which allows for a lot of discussions of opinions and perceptions in the classroom. This is why I decided to do a blog post on a topic of my choice.

The topic that I have decided to write about is ‘Alcohol & Driving’ as it is an extremely interesting, versatile, and sadly prevalent topic in Irish Society today. TY Students were also lucky enough to attend a conference on this topic, and its wider effect on people, in November in An Grianán Hotel, in Burt, however this blog post will be based on what I have learned in my TY Road Safety Module.

Upon, learning about the topic, I grasped many new perspectives on the  topic. I firstly learned that alcohol is a ‘sedative’ drink, and this means that it can alter the drinker’s behavior, health or mental well-being in some way as soon as it is consumed. As soon as alcohol is consumed, it travels straight to the liver, before a sizable amount of the alcohol hits the brain within minutes. When alcohol reaches the brain it is described as a ‘Mind-Altering Drug’ which can affect a persons functions in some way. The way in which alcohol affects a person can vary drastically. Although there is concrete research that suggests some theories of why this is so, it is widely unknown how and why some people can’handle their drink’ better than others.

Another, aspect of this topic in my Road Safety Module, that I noticed, which had really interested me, was the concept of a ‘Blood Alcohol Concentration or BAC Level. This is a measure of the amount of alcohol per head amount of alcohol in a persons blood system. The legal limit for this is 0.8g/l. This means that for every litre of blood  in a persons system, only 0.8 of a gram of alcohol is allowed to be in their system to be under the legal drink driving limit. It was extremely interesting to learn about this topic, as it was something that I had never learned about or experienced before.

I hope that this post will sum up TY Road Safety in a positive light, and that it may help to illustrate the topic of ‘Alcohol & Driving ‘ in a clearer light.

National Road Safety Week – 1st Year Bus Safety Lesson

National Road Safety Week

As part of ‘National Road Safety Week’, which is on this week from  the 5th-11th of October, Adam and I had been set the task of delivering a lesson on ‘Bus Safety’ to the first year class, 1E, and I felt that in my own opinion, it had been quite successful.

In Transition Year, we study a module called ‘Road Safety’ in which we learn about the many ways in which we can stay safe on our local roads, and the ways that we can promote road safety and awareness in our local area. Each person in our class was given a partner and a topic which we had to deliver to a first year or a second year class.

The topic that myself and Adam had been given was ‘Bus Safety’ and we had focused on the importance of bus safety and how we can keep students who may use a bus when travelling to and from school safe.  On Monday, we went into a first year SPHE class and delivered the lesson. We tried to make the lesson interesting by using a more interactive approach to the delivery of the lesson. We had used an agree/disagree game based around statements from the ‘Rules Of The Road, that had slightly shocked the students about some of the statements about road safety. It was a great chance for the students to familiarise themselves with some of the correct procedures that they may have been unsure about.

I felt that the lesson had been quite successful, as I thought that the students were engaged in the lesson. We held a lot of  Q&A sessions as well as interactive games. 

One of the most important topics that we had touched on was ‘How to stay safe on buses’ in which we laid out a simple acrynom that I think everyone should be aware of. Below I have added the acrynom which we used: 

Link to the Road Safety Authority (RSA’s) website: http://www.rsa.ie

The Rules of the Road: http://www.rulesoftheroad.ie