The School Today News

Runner Smashes 42-Year-Old School Record!

Laurence Petty, then F6, crossed the finish line for his school days in June, but not before he'd also raced his way to a brand-new HSD record for the 800m!

The 18-year-old recorded a time of 1m57.8s at Grangemouth at the end of May, beating the previous mark of 2m00.3s which had been set by FP Callum Henderson back in 1979.

Laurence said, “My first reaction was that I was pleased with the performance, as it was my first race since the start of the pandemic. However, after cooling down and speaking to my dad after the race we both realised what the performance meant, in terms of breaking the record, so that was a very pleasant surprise!

“It’s very much an honour to break such a long-standing record. It has been a goal of mine since joining the school; I knew it would be a challenge but that, with hard work, I had a chance of getting it. It’s nice to leave a mark on my time at school with this record as well. Speaking to some Former Pupils who knew the previous holder makes it even more humbling.”

Laurence, who was one of the Heads of School for session 2020/21, also runs with Hawkhill Harriers and holds the club’s U15 Boys 800m record. Before the Coronavirus pandemic, he had been invited to train with the Scottish Athletics team and, through his participation for Hawkhill in the UK U20 league over summer, he hopes to gain selection to line up for his country in competitive action.

HSD Pupils Train Up to Tackle Bullying

Nineteen pupils from F1 through to F6 took part in an anti-bullying training session run by The Diana Award in April.

Taking place online, the event saw the youngsters – who hold the roles of Anti-Bullying Ambassadors at the School – work together to acquire vital skills to allow them to confidently address different situations which can occur, both online and face-to-face.

The session looked at how the Ambassadors can seek to change the attitudes and behaviours behind various bullying scenarios. At the end of the day, the pupils went on to make an action plan of how to approach bullying issues that may arise in schools, as well as committing to their roles as Ambassadors.

The Diana Award’s Anti-Bullying Ambassador Programme sees trainers work with students and other young people to change the attitude surrounding bullying.

The programme has a strong peer-to-peer focus, with trainers giving young people the skills and confidence to become AntiBullying Ambassadors to tackle bullying long after the training has finished.

The School has been involved in the programme since 2019, and Louise Baxter, PT Guidance (Aystree), was delighted with the way the pupils responded to the training.

She said, “I was really pleased by how confidently and positively our pupils engaged with this training. They demonstrated a mature focus and determination, and I was extremely proud of their insightful and compassionate contributions to the discussions with Jade, who was an animated and inspirational speaker”.

Pupils’ Kiltwalk Raises Thousands for Local Charity

A team of determined HSD pupils from L4, L6, and L7 (with some parents in tow!) took on the Virtual Kiltwalk back in April to raise funds for Funeral Link, a charity that offers bereavement support and provides help to people in our community who are worried about how they can afford a funeral when they lose someone they love.

There were smiles all round as our hikers walked through the sunny Angus countryside, and while the team initially planned to cover 7 miles, they managed to rack up 9 miles by the end of the day!

Members of the Funeral Link organisation also did their own separate Kiltwalks over the weekend, with the whole team raising an outstanding £2,990 for Funeral Link. The Kiltwalk organisation also generously agreed to donate an extra 50% on top of that. Well done team!

Social Good Connect: HSD Signs up to Give Back

The High School of Dundee has got behind an innovative social enterprise project as it seeks to give back to the local community.

The School has signed up to Social Good Connect, a non-profit digital search and match platform which allows company employees to volunteer with their employer’s support and help the communities they serve and overstretched charities.

Aiming to connect an organisation’s staff with physical and virtual volunteering opportunities for a wide range of causes which they may have an interest in, Social Good Connect also has employee wellbeing as a focus, as well as enabling organisations to measure their social impact. So far more than 150 Scotland-based businesses and charities have joined the movement.

Speaking to Social Good Connect, Rector Lise Hudson, said, “Part of my vision for the School is that we make a significant impact through local community outreach in and around Dundee.

“When I spoke to Caroline McKenna, the founder of Social Good Connect, it set off so many bells in my head for how I’d like us as an organisation to be able to make a difference locally.

“I want to be able to utilise the skills and experience of the Social Good Connect team to capture and help us develop our commitment to volunteering. I want to demonstrate that we’re committed to making our resources, whether that’s people, time, facilities or space, available to the local community. Partnerships like this will help us do that”.

DofE Participants Paddle for Gold

Pupils pursuing the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award enjoyed an unforgettable experience on their final expedition.

In the last weeks of the summer holidays, 32 intrepid youngsters set out on a week-long adventure in Perthshire as part of their Gold Award.

In what was (because of the pandemic) the School’s first camping trip since 2019, extra precautions were taken to ensure compliance with social distancing guidelines. But that wasn’t the only thing different about this expedition…

Since the pupils had been unable to camp during their Silver expedition, the School’s DofE team wanted to make the experience particularly memorable, and so tasked the participants with making the journey from Killin to Perth by canoe.

In the true spirit of DofE the group embraced the challenge, paddling the glassy waters of Loch Tay until they reached Kenmore, and then putting their new skills to the test in the rapids of the River Tay as they made their way south.

The School’s Outdoor Activities Coordinator, Gordon Ross, said, “Overcoming any nerves, the pupils all quickly adapted and settled into the flow of the expedition. On completion it was a pleasure to hear pupils talk so fondly of their trip and reminisce on particularly eventful experiences”.

Freya Finds Her Calling With Phone Case Business

A High School of Dundee pupil found her calling after launching her own successful mobile phone case business!

Since setting up Justencaseit at the end of January, Freya Tyson has sold almost 500 cases, and recently completed an order to supply property firm Graham & Sibbald with phone coverings for its entire workforce. The F3 pupil got the inspiration to start up a business after looking online for a case for herself, and discovering that the small company which was selling the one she was interested in had been set up by a girl of a similar age.

Freya then made the bold decision to part with her savings to buy a sublimation printer and a heat press, to enable her to manufacture her own cases, which come in a number of different designs and can be customised.

It might have been a tough choice to make at the time, but the initial £600 outlay more than paid off once she started selling the cases on the online marketplace Etsy. Since then, Freya has taken orders from Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii, not to mention most of her friends!

“When I found a small business doing it, it gave me the idea to try it myself,” says Freya. “It inspired me to think ‘I could have a go’. It’s going really well. It’s exciting to be shipping orders off to places at the other side of the world.”

Freya, who promotes her cases via Instagram and TikTok, says that one of her biggest challenges is juggling her business with homework and co-curricular sport. She said, “I’m hoping to do some advertising of the business soon and I really want to keep going with it for as long as I can, and see where it goes.”

F1 & F2 Action On The Arts Days!

Mayfield was buzzing with creative activity at the end of May as pupils in F1 and F2 took part in a special Action on the Arts Days.

The sun was shining as the Drama, English, Art and Music departments joined forces to create unique day-long events for both year groups, featuring workshops, performances and no small measure of fun!

Within their School House groups, the pupils took part in sessions on drama, drumming, mask making and – via guidance from choreographer Kenny Christie - dance, with the Form 1 theme centring around Romeo and Juliet, and the Form 2 event inspired by the theme of Brazilian Carnival.

At the end of the days, the pupils gave energetic performances which brought together what they’d learned and produced in their workshops, with House points up for grabs for the best routines.

In keeping with the theme of their event, pupils in F2 also enjoyed a demonstration of Brazilian Capoeira and Samba by Miriele Schumacher and a group from Kirkcaldy, as well as learning some Portuguese. And with burgers – kindly donated by Lean and Greens - and ice cream on offer across the two days, there was a real festival feel to the occasion!

You can watch a video of the F2 performance here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=djXL2jwt6vY.

HSD Makes (Virtual!) Journey to Tokyo to Support Eilish!

The High School of Dundee community showed its support for Eilish McColgan at the Olympics by running up an impressive total as part of a special challenge!

To show their backing for Former Pupil Eilish as she competes in her third Games, towards the end of the summer term, staff, pupils and their families began taking part in the Travel to Tokyo Challenge.

Organised by Team GB and Paralympics GB, the event saw participants log physical activity, which was then converted into a distance, moving participants along a (virtual!) journey to the host city.

By the time the Games got underway, and the challenge came to an end, Team HSD had covered an amazing 39,274km – enough to make the 9,180km journey from Dundee to Tokyo more than four times! Well done to everyone who took part!

Pupil-Led 5k Challenge Raises Fantastic Total for NHS Tayside Covid Fund

A fundraising initiative organised by a High School of Dundee pupil has generated more than £1,300 for NHS Tayside’s Covid Fund.

Well done to Rose Ryan, then F5, who set up a sponsored 5k challenge for pupils and staff to take part in to raise money to support projects to provide much needed comfort to patients, staff and volunteers and to fund important medical research linked specifically to Covid-19.

Between the 1st and 15th of March, 95 pupils and staff from across the Nursery, Junior Years and Senior Years signed up for and completed the challenge by running, walking or cycling the distance.

Rose, who launched the event with the help of the School’s Charities and Community Outreach Coordinator, Karlene Douglas, said, “Over £1360 has been raised by the HSD community for the NHS Tayside Covid Fund which is fantastic.

“I have participated in various virtual races during lockdown, and I thought this virtual event would be a great way to get people out, have fun and be active in such challenging times.

“There haven’t been many opportunities over the last year to raise money for charity so I hoped that this event would be really effective in doing something small to help others. We were also able to secure sponsorship from a couple of companies. Thank you to all who took part and donated, it makes such a huge difference!”

HSD Launches F1 & F2 Enterprise Skills Course

We have received so many requests from pupils wishing to take up our Business Management and Economics subjects and we now have some really exciting plans to inspire our young people to pursue this area in their chosen career path too.

We also expanded the Business Education department with Mr. Neil Higgins, who heads up the Department, recruiting Mr. Niall Duncan and Ms. Alison Campbell to join the team.

As part of the Form 1 & 2 Enterprise Skills Course the team are developing our pupils’ key skills and competencies to allow them to become more successful learners in all subjects. The purpose of the course is for our pupils to develop key employability skills such as creativity and teamwork by using Enterprise as a vehicle to strengthen the delivery of these skills.

The Department have sought the support of our wider business community for their expertise in various fields, with the first topic being presentation skills. The first phase of the course involved dividing pupils into teams to produce a presentation on a Disney character of their choice. The core aim of this project was to encourage our pupils to speak about and demonstrate their key employability skills. Cami Alexander, a Development Coach with DC Thomson, visited the School to give a talk to our pupils to share some important advice ahead of their presentations.

Using Unifrog, the School’s pupil development platform, the pupils provided their reflections after delivering their presentations. The next stage now is for our pupils to develop their teamwork skills and creativity by focusing on branding.

Soon, we will be working with Dundee Football Club and Janettas to further develop employability skills. During the F1 parents evening, almost every parent enthused about how useful the course would be and that they wished they had the opportunity when they were younger to learn these skills through a course at school.

Stepping into STEM

Dr. Nicola Kiernan joined the School as our new Head of Chemistry at the start of the 2021 session. She is also our STEM Coordinator and she has some very exciting plans to implement a programme of cocurricular activities to support our pupils in pursuing STEM subjects in their further education and beyond.

Speaking about her passion for STEM, Dr. Kiernan said “My interests are in STEM educational research, with a focus on digital education and interdisciplinary STEM learning. The structure of typical secondary school curriculums is geared towards building knowledge and understanding within distinct disciplines, where national assessments often dictate the core academic learning. Although this provides the rigour required to master the fundamentals and perform well in exams, it can result in pupils gaining little more than a narrow appreciation of a broad number of subjects. Co-curricular STEM learning is crucial to help provide real-world context and to help make connections across the separate sciences, maths and technologies. This is essential for those interested in further STEM study or careers after school as modern-day problem-solving is dependent on multidisciplinary understanding and collaboration. In many respects, the Covid-19 pandemic has not only highlighted the importance of STEM expertise and interdisciplinary cooperation across STEM fields, but the necessity to promote and prioritise STEM education and careers with increasing urgency if we are to successfully navigate ongoing global catastrophes in future.

“The High School of Dundee has an excellent uptake of pupils studying STEM subjects and I am keen to take advantage of this and construct a programme of co-curricular events to support, guide and encourage pupils towards undertaking STEM related courses and career opportunities, but to also help develop future leaders who might innovate as well as facilitate. Next session, we hope to provide STEM workshops and whole year group learning, with the delivery of a digital course (STEM in the Time of Corona) which will task National 5-level pupils with finding STEM solutions to a global problem and require them to carry out three days of independent research. This challenge will incorporate collaborative team working, practical challenges, data-gathering field trips and final presentations. We also plan to soon share details of the High School’s first international STEM trip to USA (Florida), which will include a camp to provide space trek training at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre, lunar rover robotics missions, lunch with an astronaut, physics of flying iFly wind tunnel experience, an Everglades ecology field trip and much more. My hope is to provide a truly immersive educational experience that can inspire and shape our pupils’ futures”.

Figure Skating Success for HSD Pupil

There’s no stopping a talented High School of Dundee figure skater as her career on the ice gathers momentum!

Competing in the Tayside Trophy alongside skaters from across the UK and Ireland, Emily Thomson earned herself a secondplace finish in the Basic Novice Girls contest, securing a personal best score in the process!

Emily’s impressive performance at Dundee Ice Arena means she will now move up to the level of Intermediate Novice - which involves longer, more complex programs - and her score also meets the qualifying mark for future selection for the Great British squad. Her performance in events this year have also earned her qualification for the 2021 British Figure Skating Championships which are currently taking place in Sheffield.

Emily said, “I’m extremely happy, and I’m excited for the next stages!”

Well done Emily!