Kilgraston supports World Mental Health Day
Mental Health was also the topic of a recent assembly by Kilgraston school nurse, Laura Rentoul. You can read this below:
In the words of the former first lady of America, Michelle Obama “You should never view your challenges as a disadvantage. Instead, it’s important for you to understand that your experience facing and overcoming adversity is actually one of your biggest advantages”.
2020 has been a year of great challenges for us all in many ways. School lives have been interrupted in a way that many would never have imagined. Suddenly being able to study and interact with your peers on a day to day basis was halted by the need to stay at home to keep the population safe. This was not easy for some people. Some people enjoyed it, others may have struggled coming out of the new routine they had established at home. Whatever your experience the person next to you probably had a different one but what you all have in common is the need to look after each other to overcome adversity.
Some people call mental health ‘emotional health’ or ‘well-being’ and it’s just as important as good physical health.
Mental health is everyone’s business. We all have times when we feel down or stressed or frightened. Most of the time those feelings pass. But sometimes they develop into a more serious problem.
Everyone is different. You may bounce back from a setback while someone else may feel weighed down by it for a long time.
Your mental health doesn’t always stay the same. It can change as circumstances change and as you move through different stages of your life.
Here at Kilgraston we recognised the need to look after our school communities mental health even before COVID 19 hit. From late last year Mrs Muller and I started the initial phases of integrating a mental health ambassador programme within the school. Having visited and spoken to other schools where the programme had been a great success we started the process of introducing it into Kilgraston. Pupils that were going to be in the sixth form cohort 2020/2021 were asked to submit a statement expressing their understanding of mental health and why they wanted to be involved. From these applications we identified 11 mental health ambassadors or MHAs. They went through a training process and now stand in front of you eagerly wanting to be here for you.
The project was developed by a team of experienced mental health trainers to encourage young people to ask for help when they need it. It focuses on peers supporting their peers. The thought behind this is that people use their own experiences to help each other. There are different types of peer support, but they all aim to:
• bring together people with shared experiences to support each other
• provide a space where you feel accepted and understood
• treat everyone’s experiences as being equally important
How much support you give and receive can vary depending on what feels right for you at different times.
Lots of people find peer support improves their wellbeing and helps them cope with mental health problems. For example, it can:
• help you to open up about what you are feeling and experiencing
• introduce you to ideas and approaches that others have found helpful
• reassure you that you’re not alone in how you are feeling
• help you to connect with others and give you a sense of belonging
It encourages you to value your strengths, build your self-esteem and confidence and help you to feel more hopeful about the future.
The project was first successfully piloted and evaluated in the 2017/2018 academic year.
The role of your MHAs is to deliver an education programme on mental health to younger year groups and each session is reinforced with handouts for pupils to take home and share with their families. Our MHAs offer a non-judgemental listening ear for any pupils who are worried about their own or their friends’ mental health and they will be raising awareness and challenge stigma around the topic.
Our Mental Health Ambassadors will set a positive example, letting other pupils know that “It’s okay to not be okay” and “It’s okay to talk about mental health”.
Anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary and our MHA’s are here to help.
Sometimes we need someone to simply be there, not to fix anything or do anything in particular, but just to let us feel supported and cared about and this is what we hope you will feel with the introduction of the MHAs within Kilgraston. And now all that is left is for me to do is let them introduce themselves and say a little more about their role.
You can watch some of our other assemblies including this one on the importance of manners.
Kilgraston’s Headmistress discusses 2021 exams on Radio Tay
Kilgraston’s Headmistress, Mrs Dorothy MacGinty, featured on local radio station, Radio Tay, discussing the recent 2021 examination announcement.
You can listen to what Mrs MacGinty said via the link below, at around the one hour mark.
You can also subscribe or register to the Catholic Universe and read more about Mrs MacGinty’s response to the exam announcement and you can read some of our other press articles here.
Emma plays on BBC Radio Three
Kilgraston pupil Emma recently took to the BBC Radio Three airwaves as part of the prestigious BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra concert series. Emma, who is in Upper Fourth, plays in the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland and said: “It was a bit daunting thinking about how many people would hear and see the recording but it was worth it in the end.”
Emma has played violin since she was in Primary Three and has been in the National Youth Orchestra for two years, currently auditioning for her third.
She usually attends a camp run by the orchestra but this year, due to COVID, this was cancelled. So instead of having no camp, the NYOS teamed up with the BBC’s SSO.
Emma explained: “The BBC SSO organised the event and recorded it for BBC Radio Three. The piece we’re playing is by a composer C Duncan and it’s called ‘Dance from a Distance’. Each of the members of the NYOS individually recorded their parts at home and the composer was on all the calls with us.”
Watch and listen to the beautiful track here.
School assembly - Mrs Bluett discusses the importance of manners
School assemblies give Kilgraston staff and our pupils the chance to show knowledge or even passion about a specific subject.
Recently, our Sixth Form lecture series has covered a wide variety of subjects including European Day of Languages and Protest Poetry and now Head of Latin and Classics, Mrs Bluett looked at the topic of manners.
You can watch her superb assembly here.
Charity fundraising and charity ideas
Charity fundraising plays an important part to life at Kilgraston so we recently took part in the world’s biggest coffee morning, Macmillan Coffee Morning 2020. It sees people all over the UK host their own coffee morning, raising money for the charity which provides support and care for people living with cancer.
Of course, with COVID, this year’s event was slightly different. However it didn’t stop our charity fundraising efforts with the school raising £277.38 so a huge thank you to everyone who donated. A special thank you to Kilgraston’s catering team, Inspire, who donated hot chocolate and delicious cupcakes.
The event was organised by Kilgraston’s Community and Charity prefect, Upper Sixth’s, Katie who said: “Charity is a big part of Kilgraston and thanks to the help of many of my peers, Inspire Catering and everyone’s generous donations I believe Macmillan Coffee Morning was a huge success.
“Macmillan Cancer support is crucial during these times and I’m so happy that we were able to bring our Kilgraston community together for such a good cause.”
It is this year’s first charity fundraising event but it is an important subject to Katie and she hopes to have many more brilliant money-raising events.
Katie said: “Charity and Community has always been very important to me because it not only does it make a difference in our local community, but also worldwide.
“I’m really looking forward to being able to try and organise as many charity events as possible this year; fundraisers such as sponsored cycles and walks, bake sales and Home Clothes Days, not only do these help those in need but also brings our Kilgraston community together.
“I am working alongside Mr Allaker to once again be holding ‘SCIAF’ fundraisers later this term, such as the ‘Real Gifts’ at Christmas, which in previous years has been a massive success. ‘SCIAF’ is the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, they work in 26 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America to help some of the poorest people in the world, regardless of religion, work their way out of poverty.
“The Kilgraston boarders are also participating in this years World Porridge day in October, an international fundraiser for Mary’s Meals to aid starving children in developing countries.
“In the local community our trips to Moncrieffe Care Home will be unfortunately be unable to go ahead this year, however the Junior School pupils are making some lovely cards which I’m sure will be greatly appreciated by all of the residents and staff. The annual Junior Years Harvest Festival will hopefully be able to go ahead again this year, where all of the food donations are given go to a local homeless shelter but also helps the junior girls to gain an increased value in the community.”
You can read more about Kilgraston’s charity fundraising and how important it is to the school here.
Boarding activities
Boarding activities at Kilgraston can be fun and fast-paced, offer a chance to unwind or somewhere in-between. Once school is finished, we offer a schedule of events for our boarders with sight-seeing trips around Scotland interspersed with more relaxing activities in-school. So to keep our boarders entertained, we recently organised a Murder Mystery night.
Channelling their inner Sherlock Holmes, our teams had to solve the mystery of what happened to Baroness Arabella Porkingon III, and who should claim her inheritance.
It was a night straight out of an Agatha Christie novel, with each student taking on the role of a colourful character. Each character had a key clue to the mystery, and key information that they had to discover from one another. They had to question each other to discover the information, before contributing what they found out in the final denouement.
A big thank you to all the students who participated, and put so much effort into dressing up as their character. A special mention must be given to our very own Chaplain, Mr Allaker, who made a very dramatic confession when he was revealed to be the villain of the night!
You can find out more about boarding activities and what it’s like to board by listening to Libby’s story, you can watch this here.
Kilgraston’s boarding activities also featured recently in the Daily Telegraph. Following a ballot amongst our boarders, pupils opted to bring back traditional games such as tag and rounders rather than quizzes or film nights. In the article, Mrs MacGinty said: “We were very surprised by the answer. They voted to organise traditional games more commonly found in playgrounds when I was a child. Girls of all ages love them. They’re now laughing together, working as a team, enjoying the competitive nature without match pressure.”
You can read the article by registering at the Daily Telegraph here.
European Day of Languages 2020
Every year on September 26, the European Union celebrates the European Day of Languages. So this week, in one of our assemblies, Kilgraston turned its focus onto this annual event with a special assembly by our Head of Modern Languages, Madame Dépreux, and Upper Sixth’s Romy.
Looking back over the reasons for the creation of the European Day of Languages, Madame Dépreux discussed the rich diversity of languages within the EU and the benefits of learning foreign languages.
A polished presentation by Upper Sixth’s Romy followed, where she looked at the history and development of the European Union; how Britain initially declined to join the founding treaties which later lead to the establishment of the EEC, and was then refused membership twice before a successful application in 1973.
Analysing the UK’s 2016 BREXIT vote, Romy discussed the influential reasons of why people voted to leave the EU, and how the need for second languages will now grow as a result.
Kilgraston’s European Day of Languages assembly is available to view here.
cross country 2020
Kilgraston’s annual cross country race took place albeit in a slightly different format this year due to COVID restrictions.
In stunning autumnal Scottish sunshine, Upper Third’s Ishbel stormed home to victory with Maia in Upper Third coming second and Lower Third’s Lilly coming in third.
Amidst blustery winds and cloudy skies, the Senior School cross country took place the following day with an impressive sprint finish seeing Lower Sixth’s Poppy crossing the finish line just in front of Upper Sixth’s Paula and Upper Sixth’s Abbie taking home third place.
The times then meant the overall cross country champion was Poppy with Paula coming second and Upper Fifth’s Lexie taking third place.
It is the first time the race has been split over two days as the entire School typically takes part together. However due to COVID, the School took measures to protect our pupils, with not only different race days but also staggered start times too.
The restrictions did not stop the cross country being its usual colourful and fun celebration with our pupils wearing their house colours, and a sea of red, green, purple and yellow spread around our beautiful countryside campus as the race took place.
Well done to all of our pupils who took part, and especially to our winners.
Here is our round-up of last year’s cross country event.
Sixth Form lectures
This year Kilgraston is launching a series of Sixth Form lectures where our Sixth Formers will do an assembly in front of our Senior School. It is an opportunity for the Sixth Formers to present on a subject that is inspirational and important to them and recently Upper Sixth’s Anna looked at protest poetry and the cult figure of Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova.
Akhmatova was one of Russia’s most famous and influential female poets, using poetry as a mechanism to oppose the totalitarianism of Josef Stalin.
She was one of the very few members of the intelligentsia to survive Stalin’s terrors.
In her assembly, Sixth Former Anna said: “Anna Akhmatova was an inspirational women thanks to her bravery and talent and her strong patriarchal loyalty to her beloved Russia. She chose not to abandon her country, choosing instead to stand by Russia and her people. She decided to risk her life by continuing to write whether or not she was not going to be published.”
Akhmatova’s most famous poem, Requiem was distributed secretly, passed on by word of mouth, committed to memory, with any written records being burnt so as to avoid arrest.
Anna said: “We can continue to learn from her resilience today and her courage and talent will be remembered for many years to come.”
You can watch some of our other Autumn term 2020 assemblies here.
Kilgraston’s Women and Business lecture series - Gleneagles
Kilgraston’s Women and Business lecture series continues this term and our latest speaker was Gleneagles’ Commercial Director, Jane McGee. Jane, who has worked for the luxury hotel since 2018, outlined her career and some of the incredible highlights. It is a career which has seen Jane travel all over the world, working in some of the most beautiful and luxurious hotels including Bangkok’s Mandarin Oriental where Jane said: “The level of customer service is phenomenal with several members of staff to every guest. You can just sit high above this amazing city and calmly watch the huge city gyrate before you.”
Kilgraston’s Women in Business series is an opportunity for our older pupils to hear in-depth stories from women in rich and diverse careers. In the past year, we have welcomed a National newspaper columnist, an accountant, a family law expert, a Professor of Photodermatology and Consultant Dermatologist to name just a few. In line with our on-going commitment to building the next generation of entrepreneurs, in 2019 Kilgraston was also the proud sponsor of the Inspirational Women category at the 2019 Business Women Scotland Awards.
Kilgraston Headmistress, Mrs MacGinty, said: “Having the opportunity to hear from someone of Jane’s calibre was a treat indeed. Her global experience and obvious love for her chosen career was a great chance for girls to hear, first hand, about this fascinating path. We’d all like to say a very big thank you to Jane for giving up her valuable time at this extremely busy time.”
The School’s Women in Business series will welcome an engineer from SSE, an orthodontist from Dundee and a stem cell expert from Ninewells Hospital during the next four months.
You can also read more about Jane’s talk on the GSA website.