Dashboard > Team > The Musketeers Our Idea
Why did your team choose to focus on this challenge?The transition from primary to secondary school can be a challenging and difficult time for a young person. Our Big Idea is to create a fun and welcoming induction event to introduce 6th class students and their parents to our school and to create a mentoring link with our current first-year students. We will use this time to address any mental health issues that may arise, show them the supports available in the school and will will create a system for existing first years to share their learning and experiences from their first year.
What have you learned about the challenge that you didn't know before?
We have learned that for some young people this time in their life is very difficult and making friends and the unknown is very tough. We read an article from The Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and it said that the lack of friendship can be 'overwhelming' for some students. We would like to ease this anxiety and reduce what they don't know so it is not as scary. We also think we could use this as a chance to help parents to connect over a coffee and we could help by supplying second hand uniforms
Outline the specific problem you would like to solve for your Hero and two or three solutions you think would help.
We would basically like to make life a bit easier for a young person starting secondary school. We think there are lots of things they might worry about that can be talked about early on and they don't spend the summer worrying about it. We think that by hosting a fun event we can minimise these fears and they will feel more confident. We also think that involving our current first year students in this event will mean they can share what they have learned and also the new students will have a familiar face that they can relate to in those first weeks of September. As a side we think that lots of parent worry about how their child will cope and they might worry about the cost of going to secondary. We can help parents feel more reassured by offering advice, showing them how the school operates and then providing second-hand uniforms and resources.
Ask your Mentor anything.
If we wanted to host an event do you know of any services that could help us with the things we need. We do not have a big budget and we would love any help and advice. Thank you