The heart of the school
‘Learning from Each Other’ – since 1994
The Croí, the last new building to be added before confirmation of the rebuild of Shimna, came about as a result of our successful Development Proposal to grow to a school of 620 students – though we always have more! Shimna had been founded as a school of 500 students, by choice in order to provide human scale education. The Department of Education changed policy to establish a sustainability figure of at least 600 students for a post primary school, with at least 120 student in the 6th form, and this meant that we needed to expand to guarantee Shimna’s future. The increase in numbers was planned at 20 students in each year 8, leading to an increase of 20 for our 6th form. Growing gradually allowed us to plan carefully to meet the needs of the additional students each year in terms of curriculum and accommodation.
The strongest curriculum development at the time was the excellent work of John McCloskey in establishing Philosophy and Ethics as a subject at GCSE and A level. He also created an innovative, holistic syllabus for Key Stage 3, combining Integration, Religious Studies, Learning for Life and Work and Relationship and Sexuality Education. The students loved it, and numbers choosing Phil and Eth soared. When the Department of Education agreed to provide us with an additional building of two classrooms to cater for our growing numbers, we decided to establish the Croí as a home for John’s Integrated and Religious Studies department.
Two more lucky coincidences added value to the project. John had always hoped to create a quiet space in the school for everyone who wanted to focus their thoughts, have a challenging conversation, reflect, pray, meditate, consider, meet others for small group projects…. A lucky glance at the builders’ plan identified the curious outline of a large number of tiny toilets in the space between the two classrooms. The wrongly allocated plans were in fact for a nursery unit! Undeterred, we asked the builders to dispense with the tiny toilets, and leave us the space, and the Quiet room was born.
The Croí arrived with us fully formed as a modular building dropped in by crane and then clad in cedar to match the Sports Hall.
The Croí became a hive of exciting, challenging learning and teaching from John and colleague Roseanna McGill Gilmore. The Quiet space served its quiet purpose, but also became the home of our pro-active, campaigning and enthusiastic Amnesty branch. When production began on the I and RS department videos, ‘Religious Voices’ and ‘Refugee Voices’, the Croí became a recording studio. The Croí may have come last, the Croí may have been small, but the contribution of the Croi to Shimna and to Integration has been immeasurable.
