By Sophie Malone, TY 
This week in Athboy Community School was Multi-Cultural week, where around 100 students and staff from, or descended from over 30 different countries, came together to share and celebrate their culture and heritage with the rest of the school. The events were organised by the Student Council. 

On Monday, the week kicked off with welcome posters and decorations relating to many different countries taking part, along with a morning announcement over the intercom in English, Irish and Ukrainian by Student Council P.R.O.’s Isobel Canty and Yeva Mariash, welcoming everyone to Multi-Culturalweek. 

At break time, the celebrations got into full swing with a colourful and entertaining flag ceremony, organised by Ms. Leddy and Mr Magner, where a studentrepresenting each country taking part took up their flag and marched from the library to the General Purpose Area to the tunes of songs from around the world compiled by the Student Council in collaboration with all of the participants who nominated their favourite song to represent their country. 
 

Throughout the week the Home Ec department were making dishes in classes from some of our many nations as well as preparing to cater for the whole school on the Fair Day on the Thursday.  

The students in An Cuan made amazing Welsh Cakes with Ms McKeown. The Frienship Tree in the GPA was decorated as a Multi-Cultural Tree as students posted leaves in the colours of their flags.

On Tuesday and Wednesday there was a foreign language film shown in the demo room during lunch, with snacks and juice for anyone who wanted to watch. There was big crowd on each of the two days to watch the films, an Italian one on the Tuesday and a French picture on the Wednesday. 
The Multi-Cultural fair took place on the 11th of December in the school PE hall. The students taking part were called down at second class to set up their stalls and have everything prepared. Throughout the day until lunch, the rest of the students in the school were invited year by year to come down with their teachers and browse the stalls, which displayed trinkets, flags, maps, clothing, music, food or any other parts of their culture the students wanted to show off. There was music, dance, face-paining, Christmas Lights and an a great atmosphere.

Ms. Lynch and Ms Shekleton and their students had worked in cookery classes all week on five different recipes nominated by the students themselves.  Every student got a token to try one or two tasters of these desserts.  

The variety of the displays, the enthusiasm of the students and the efforts of the Student Council and staff involved helped make the week a huge success and helped the school to enjoy a fun week of recognising and celebrating the many different cultures that Athboy Community School proudly has.