By Sibéal Carolan, Nurture Teacher in Pelletstown ETNS
At Pelletstown ETNS, we have been quite busy the past couple of months welcoming lots of new families to our school who have arrived from Ukraine. Our main aim was to make such a difficult transition as seamless as possible, offering support to parents as well as students. We realised how important it was for us to provide a safe place for these families to use to access support. Our nurture room is the perfect place for this.
Every morning, our new students begin their day by attending the nurture room with some of their peers. This gives the students an opportunity to speak their own language, build relationships and feel safe in their new environment. They spend thirty minutes engaging in a variety of play activities or eating their breakfast, which we provide, and are then walked to their classroom to continue their school day.
Every Friday, the parents of our new students are welcomed into our nurture room for a cup of tea and a chat. This was particularly beneficial when these families first joined our school. It gave us teachers the opportunity to introduce ourselves and answer any questions that the parents might have had.
Without the nurture room, it would have been more challenging to implement these daily activities. All the appropriate resources were there and the staff at our school have been amazing at stepping into our nurture room, switching around their timetables and helping to create a happy and safe environment for these new families who we have welcomed to Pelletstown ETNS. We are so thrilled to see how the children have settled into their new school and we believe that the nurture room has played a major part in this.
Pelletstown’s nurture room was recently featured in the Irish Times. Read all about it here!
