Month: January 2022

Canterbury Hall

Student Head of Hall- Shanaya Reynolds

Deputy student Head of Hall – Isis Osei-Kusi

Walsingham Hall

Student Head of Hall – Adeola Ojora

Deputy Student Head of Hall – Damar Brown

York Hall

Student Head of Hall – Debby Phillip-Akintunde

Deputy Student Head of Hall – Rodney Agyemang

Durham Hall

Student Head of Hall – Aliyah Akinola

Deputy Student Head of Hall – Izundu Ariri

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) is marked each year on 27th January – the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. On this day, schools, communities and faith groups across the UK join together in national and local events to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and of even more recent genocides. 

Deacon Javier, our Lay Chaplin, lead a Holocaust Memorial service at each site which staff and students attended.  The service was extremely moving and highlighted the Nazi Persecution and the genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur, in the hope that there may be One Day in the future with no genocide. 

We were privileged to host a talk with two holocaust survivors, Paul Sved and Ivan Shaw, who both have fascinating stories about their experiences as young children living in cities under Nazi control. Both speakers, now in their 80’s, gave up their time to speak to CTK lower sixth students as part of the Sixth Forms 10:10 programme. Their stories were extremely moving and highlighted the sadness in their childhood and their victimisation of Nazi persecution. The pair went on to give a recap of their oppression, the time spent away from their families as young children, the day they finally managed to escape Nazi occupation and how they remarkably went on to lead normal happy lives. 

Our students were fascinated by their stories and amazed by the bravery of the survivors. One student said “The testimonies gave me a very harsh yet interesting insight into life during the Holocaust. We’ve heard from historians but not often the survivors and it allowed me to understand the atrocities that were taken upon the people of that time and helped me understand the misfortune they went through. Even with all his discomfort he prevailed and taught a valuable lesson on how two very different views can affect the whole of human history.” – Kanye Cross-Gordon, CTK St Mary’s student. 

We would like to say a big thank you to the Holocaust Educational Trust for arranging this session with us and to the incredible guest speakers for sharing their memorable stories with us at this time. 

The Football Team over at St Mary’s have been honing in on their skills recently and assessing their strategies on the pitch. As part of their analysis, the team took to the field to conduct a research project looking into the effects of pressure on players when it comes to performance and penalty kicks. The players took turns to experience both positive and negative commentary from their team mates right before they took their goal kick. They also experimented with taking kicks in silence to see how that may also affect their psyche.

It was noted that all three conditions had some sort of impact on player’s performance, with some player’s cracking under the pressure and some performing notably better with positive encouragement.

We are glad that the team are able to utilize the vast playing fields here at St Mary’s for training and research activities such as these. However, did the team’s research have any impact on their game-play?

Last week, the team travelled to North Kent College with hopes to consolidate their mid-table position. The team gave a strong performance and even had a chance to put their research to the test when it came to a penalty free-kick. The CTK striker made the most of the newly adopted techniques on minimising the pressure felt in free-kick situations managing to successfully score the 4th goal of the match giving us a 4-1 victory against our worthy opponents. The outcome of this game boosts us up to 3rd in the tables as we hope to continue our winning trend in the remaining fixtures.

Well done to the team!

Social Action including fundraising is important to all CTK St Mary’s students. Students have been exploring new ways to raise money for charity. Recently students supported ‘Power the Fight’; a youth-centred charity which aims to support local communities in the fight against youth violence. This was a charity chosen by the students themselves. 

Students Jane Adegbesan and Tabitha Onafowokan feel passionately about the charity’s mission and put a great deal of hard work into organising an event which involved making a arrange of milkshakes.  The highly successful event took place in the Chaplaincy and proved very popular with both students and staff. 

The milkshakes included flavours such as Oreo, Hershey’s and Kinder Bueno, and were delicious. The day was a great success and both Jane and Tabitha were extremely happy with the outcome. 

“We’ve been planning this event for quite some time.” States Jane, “We’re extremely happy the event has been successful, and we can’t wait to provide the charity with these funds. Power the Fight means a lot to us, as we have friends who have personally benefited from their work, and we hope it goes a long way!” 

The sale managed to raise a fantastic £132 which will now be donated to the ‘Power the Fight’ Charity to help them in their mission to end youth violence. A massive well done to the student fundraisers as well as the staff and students that contributed! 

The work of our CTK Eco Group continues to go from strength to strength. The Eco committee meet regularly to take forward the Sixth Form’s Green agenda. In a recent meeting they discussed changes they could make to reduce our impact on the environment. Recently, the group have been looking at the impact of meat farming and the damage that such heavily laboured factories can do to the environment. 

The outcome of these meetings has inspired students to consider eating alternative foods that have little-to-no impact on the environment, as it helps reduce the impact too much meat consumption has on both the human body and the environment. 

The reps launched a competition across the three CTK sites, which looked at identifying meat free dishes that each site wanted to take forward. Entrants had to plan a recipe for their tastiest meat-free dish which would be cooked in the canteen. We await to hear the outcome, but recipes included: vegetarian Pizza, meat free chilly, cauliflower curry along with Quorn based alternatives to traditional meat-based recipes. 

The sixth form also received a visit from the Education and Engagement Officer for the Big City Butterfly Project. This is an exciting new project that aims to inspire Londoners to discover butterflies and moths, and connect them with nature and their local green spaces. As well as offering habitat management advice, they have also offered to run a butterfly ID workshop for staff and students. This is an opportunity to gain skills and knowledge to help increase butterfly monitoring across the project area.