Teacher Victoria to become education ambassador in UK

Teacher Victoria to become education ambassador in UK

25 May 2022

CROSSGAR teacher Victoria Polly has been invited to become an Education Ambassador for UK-wide education charity Into Film.

The charity was highly impressed by the unique work of St Colmcille’s High School’s use of film to boost the mental health of pupils and staff through a very special project creating a series of films and holding a film festival, complete with Oscar-style awards.

Mrs Polly — who is head of English at the school — co-ordinated the project and looked at ways that all areas of the curriculum could use film to teach the students across the pupils from Years 8 and 9.

The local school had been through a particularly difficult period with Covid and wanted to resurrect the wonderful school spirit and to create a positive atmosphere to boost mental health.

The idea for the project began when the school had asked students to create their own virtual open night video to be used on the website to showcase the qualities of St Colmcille’s High School to P7 pupils. The fun, humorous video created by the young people caused such a buzz in school.

School principal Seamus Hanna said all schools were reflecting on how to support the mental health of their pupils which had been impacted by the effects of Covid.

“It had been such a dark time and I can’t even put into words the strange atmosphere in school. When we saw the massive positive impact of this first video project, we decided to expand it,” he said.

The team from Into Film were impressed by the hard work done throughout the local school by the teachers and pupils and invited Mrs Polly to be an ambassador for the organisation.

Into Film’s programme delivery coordinator Peter Murray said he was delighted that Mrs Polly has become one of their ambassadors. 

“The work that this school has done is exactly what Into Film is all about, using film as a teaching tool across the wider curriculum. We loved their energy and enthusiasm and the way everyone got involved,” he said.

Mrs Polly said: “We know the power of film to transport us to another world and allow us to give freedom to our imaginations. 

“Our pupils began to talk about genre, setting, plot, characterisation, s, camera angles and, most importantly, we witnessed energy, enthusiasm, laughter, and of course, competition emerging from our pupils.

“The darkness of the virus was being replaced with a passion to succeed and a desire to enjoy learning and to show the family spirit that typifies our school.”

Working with local film company, 3fortyfive Films, each class at St Colmcille’s was given one full day filming where they were provided with professional help to direct and produce their films.

With films set in a prison, a forest and a school, they also had a range of characters including villains, heroes, doctors, lawyers, teachers, zombies and even a dancing dinosaur, with the scripts and characters created by the students prior to filming brought to life in just six days.

Teaching staff all got behind the project and worked as a team and, as they began to see the impact on the students, they started to plan their own short film clips based on famous scenes from blockbuster films as a way to bring parents and the wider community back into the school.

Mr Hanna added: “The quality of all the pupils’ work was unbelievable. The future of the movie industry is definitely in good hands with this generation.” 

The films made by the St Colmcille’s students are available to watch on their Facebook page www.facebook.com/stcolmcillescrossgar.