A Laois school has been awarded its first Amber Flag from Pieta House for promoting positive mental health and wellbeing across the school in 2024-2025.

For more pictures, click NEXT or ARROW. More on the story below.

Scoil Fionntáin Naofa, Shanahoe have held a wide range of initiatives throughout the year to promote positive wellbeing in students.

Principal and Amber Flag Co-ordinator, Mr Barry Whelan, was delighted with this result.

"Participating in the Amber Flag initiative was a very worthwhile endeavour this year," Mr Whelan said.

"Essentially, it gave wellbeing development and promotion a central focus in our school community.  The formulation of specific targets together with associated actions for achieving them, made the pursuit of wellbeing across the school something collaborative, manageable, achievable, meaningful and purposeful for all concerned," he said.

"The formulation of the Amber Flag committee ensured that pupil voice and participation was to the forefront at all times and to all intents and purposes the pupils led out on achieving the Amber Flag Award this year and they are to be highly commended in that regard," Mr Whelan finished.

Of the six targets to achieve the Amber Flag, the first saw the https://www.leinsterexpress.ie/section/720/schoolsfocus on the practice of mindfulness and meditation on a daily basis.

All teachers & SNA staff availed of continuous professional development as part of Croke Park Hours in the school year 2023-2024 in the practice of ‘Christian Meditation’ with Dr. Noel Keating. Over the course of this school year, all classes have been implementing ‘Christian Mediation’ to great effect.

Target 2 was to hold a fundraiser to support Pieta House and the excellent work that they do in promoting and supporting positive mental health and wellbeing across the country.

This fundraiser took the form of an ‘Amber Awareness Day’ at whole school level on ‘Blue Monday’ (January 20 2025).

‘Amber Awareness Day’ also had a dual purpose of dispelling the Winter blues and injecting light, on what is universally acknowledged as being one of the lowest and darkest days of the calendar year.

On the day in question, all pupils came to school dressed in Amber clothing and in turn made a donation to Pieta House. To this end, €182.50 was collected on the day in support of the excellent work that Pieta House does.

Target 3 of the ‘Amber Flag’ application was based on having a common daily wellbeing focus across all classes.

The Amber Flag committee A.K.A the ‘wellbeing warriors’ themselves devised the focus of/for each day to include, ‘Mindful Monday’, 'Thoughtful Tuesday’, ‘Wellbeing Wednesday’, ‘Talk about it Thursday’ & ‘Friendly Feelings Friday’.

The Amber Flag committee actively promoted this daily focus across all classes on a weekly basis and also at the school’s monthly ‘Teacht le Chéiles’ in which all classes were in attendance.

As the year progressed, both pupils and staff alike came to internalise the daily focus and in turn ensured that adequate time and space was given to fulfil its core purpose in their respective classes and settings.

Target 4 focused on facilitating daily movement breaks across all classes in the school to improve general wellbeing, focus and attention.

The ‘Active Schools’ committee under the guidance and direction of Mr. Johnny Watson (Deputy Principal and Active Schools Coordinator) organised the ‘Skip Around Europe Challenge’ for two weeks before Easter this year and two weeks after, and all classes used this challenge to great effect as their daily movement break during this period.

The school’s participation in this challenge culminated in Scoil Fionntáin Naofa being the Laois school to be awarded a climbing wall in a national competition organised by the ‘Active Schools’ initiative which saw one school in each county in Ireland being selected as the lucky recipients of a climbing wall for their school grounds.

This climbing wall will be installed over the Summer months and will be a fantastic ‘active addition’ to the school grounds for the pupils on their return to school in the Autumn.

Target 5 was to hold an inaugural whole school ‘Wellbeing & Mental Health Week’ at the end of March 2025.

Each of the school’s five teachers took responsibility for organising a wellbeing related day across the week to include Monday: Mindfulness and Meditation, Tuesday: Physical Activity to promote wellbeing, Wednesday: 'Giving
Compliments' and ‘Compliment Circles’; Thursday: ‘Finding Our Happy Place’ and Friday: 'Yoga, Mindfulness and Meditation' activities with an external tutor namely, Ms. Áine Loveland of the ‘Yoga Fairy’.

Owing to the very positive impact of the mindfulness, meditation and yoga sessions provided on the Friday of wellbeing week, Ms. Áine Loveland of the ‘Yoga Fairy’ will be returning to do a five week block of sessions for all classes at the beginning of the new school year (2025-2026) to help the pupils to reintegrate to school life following the Summer holidays.

Target 6 was to implement in full the ‘Friends for Life’ wellbeing and resilience building and anxiety prevention programme in 5th & 6th Classes in the school in terms 2 and 3 of the school year 2024-2025.

Mr. Whelan was trained in the delivery of this programme in the school year 2023-2024 by the National Educational Psychological Service (NEPS). All teaching staff in the school have now been trained in Restorative Practices (RP) approaches in conjunction with Laois Education Support Centre.

PICTURES: Laois school kids crowned 'Nature Heroes' in national award!