Meitheal

“Meitheal” is an Irish word meaning “gathering” or assembly group”. The  Scoil Mhuire Meitheal is a group of 5th Year pupils, selected and trained by the Redemption Scala Youth Ministry  based in  Blackrock.

The overall aim of the Meitheal group is personal and leadership development through service to the community. The group tires to identify needs within the school community and by liasing with the School Principal and Meitheal Support Teacher; Meitheal will try and meet those needs.

They focus especially on First Years and help them to feel welcome and settled in the school. They also respond to other needs identified by either pupils or teachers.

This year more than ever we feel that our Meitheal team in Scoil Mhuire emulated this meaning. It was certainly a challenge but our team rose to the occasion magnificently with inventive new techniques to engage with our amazing first years and a positive attitude that sustained us through many a lunchtime meeting.

Whether we were running Bakeoff themed cake competitions over Instagram or organising Kahoots, we had an incredible experience and really bonded as a team. Despite a different but still very enjoyable approach to our training from Scala and missing out on many traditional Meitheal events like the Christians Ceilí, we refused to let the difficulties overwhelm us and adapted. The Meitheal Instagram page was always updated and ready for any messages and our (embarrassing) masked and unmasked photos were hung in every classroom in the hopes that the girls would still recognise us when this is all over.

The whole team felt that we really bonded together as a unit and can honestly say that we will walk away from fifth year with seven more friends than we started with. The group chat will hopefully stay active enough for memories to pop up in years to come.

A huge thank you is owed to all first year teachers who all allowed us to hijack classes and worked with us closely to ensure everything ran smoothly. Another enormous thank you should be given to our first years themselves – you all blew us away with your engagement with our activities from the beautiful Christmas cards for SHARE to correctly identifying each baby-face Meitheal member on Instagram. You never hesitated to chime in with suggestions and we really enjoyed working with you this year. Hopefully you won’t be too cool as second years to say hello when we pass you in the corridor next year!