After a long and wonderful time spent at Collinstown Park Community College, Ms Campbell is retiring. Her teaching career started in September of 1984, just three full months after the school was first established. Ms Campbell was one of the first teachers at our school and after 37 years at Collinstown, unfortunately she is retiring. 

Ms Campbell has spent a very long time in our school and over the years she taught a number of different subjects too. She has taught English, history, geography, CSPE, SPHE, social studies, communications and spent some time on work experience too. She did an amazing job teaching this wide range of subjects over the years she has spent at our school. We would like to thank Ms Campbell for sharing her knowledge with us since the very beginning of the school’s history.

“I would have to say that I have enjoyed every day in CPCC. There has always been a great relationship between students and teachers. Collinstown Park is a community where everyone belongs and plays a very important role in that community. We all get the chance to show what we are good at. That’s what makes our school so good for students and teachers.” – Ms Campbell 

Below is just a snapshot of how Ms Campbell’s colleagues and friends were positively influenced by her over the years: 

“A Lady, a heart of gold, most caring teacher.  A martyr for chocolate. One of the foundation stones of Collinstown Park.” – Mr Doolin.

“Ms Campbell is a committed and a very hard working teacher” – Ms Friel.

“She is a lovely, kind, caring, teacher. Always call her Countess Kathleen! The students would have lost a very advocated person, Ms Campbell is always willing to help out other people when they’re in need! Loves a laugh and a giggle, I’ll miss her!” – Ms Dunne.

“When you meet Ms Campbell, you know you are in the presence of a teacher, not just a regular teacher, a great teacher and a great and noble person. In all the years I’ve known Ms Campbell, I identify her as one of those unique and singular beings who demonstrate empathy to others, a true desire and ability to inspire others and the willingness to bring out the greatness in each of us as humans and learners, in and out of the classroom.  That intrinsic task is a task that comes from within the spirit and soul of a teacher who is great.  It is not on its own a learned or reflective or extrinsic practice.  It is the marked ability to brings one’s personality to the core and apply yourself enthusiastically and passionately in your work and day to day activity.  To me, Ms Campbell encapsulates this beingness – the lady who is a nurturer, a colleague, a loyal and compassionate friend, and a truly great teacher. ” – Ms Hogan

“Ms Campbell has made a huge contribution to the education of students in this college over many years. She is dedicated and committed to teaching. Her kindness and professionalism has put so many students at ease and helped them realise their true potential.” – Ms Duffy.

All of the students in Collinstown Park Community College would like to thank Ms Campbell for spending her whole teaching career with us in CPCC. Thank you and all the best in your retirement! 

Chloe Behan and Jakub Szoldra – TY Press

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Castle Crashers is a fairly old action-adventure, beat’em up type of game, in which you rush through several levels in need of saving people and the King’s crystal from a Wizard. You do this as one of four trusted champions. The game is multiplayer and can be played locally on the same device, or online with friends.

Castle Crashers released on the 27th August 2008 making it one of the oldest games we’ve ever personally seen. The game is made by The Behemoth, an American video game development company created in 2003. The game is rated a 10/10 on steam, with 98% of google users liking the game. 

The gameplay of Castle Crashers is strange, but also amazing. The usual ‘wasd’ keys used to move are instead used for combat, with the arrow keys used to move. Q and E are used to cycle between items and special weapons, like bombs and sandwiches. You can also use magic to defeat your opponents. Different knights have different types of magic, the Red Knight uses electrical magic, the Blue Knight uses ice magic, the Orange Knight uses fire magic and the Green Knight uses poison magic. You can level up and put stat points into Strength, Magic, Defense, and Agility, which help your character for harder levels and unlock new abilities. 

Our gameplay was very fun, we felt great powering through barbarians and thieves, and going through levels. The first boss was the Barbarian Boss, a gigantic barbarian, who was very beefy. After defeating it, we moved onto the thieves’ forest. Full of thieves who use bows and arrows to fight, mostly. We then encountered a new type of enemy called trolls, they were easy to kill but were still annoying.

Powering through the early-game, you eventually encounter stronger enemies and bosses, such as the Conehead Groom, Cyclops, Industrial King and Frost King. After defeating these (and numerous more bosses), you encounter the final ones. These ones are much stronger (and more infuriating to fight on our part) and smarter than the other bosses. 

The bosses we encountered were The Painter and Undead Cyclops first. The Painter was fairly easy, much easier than the next lot, and it fights by painting official castle crashers concept art, which is honestly a very smart idea from the developers. The Undead Cyclops was much harder, however, it only felt hard as it was a much longer fight than The Painter and more repetitive as well. After defeating these two, you move onto the next two, much harder bosses.

The Necromancer is the next boss, one we personally had a lot of trouble with and failed to defeat. We had to restock on potions and sandwiches (buff items) and go back to the boss to try again. The Necromancer summons buffed versions of enemies we’ve encountered throughout the game, making them much harder and much smarter with their attacks and more able to dodge ours. I was forced to juggle (the act of stunning my enemies constantly in the air) my enemies across to not let them attack my friend, while he fried them with his powerful electrical magic. After defeating these enemies, he flies down to fight you himself. He fights like you, just a lot stronger and using necromantic magic such as summoning a skeleton to charge at you. We eventually defeated him, albeit, our resources were exhausted and we had to buy more afterward.

The Evil Wizard is the final boss. Who has several phases, one phase even tricks you into thinking you’ve won, and then he bursts out of a large treasure chest, attacking as a giant spider-like form. We eventually defeated the evil wizard, the place collapsing as we fell onto the crystal and rode it back to our castle, and returned it, completing the game.

We didn’t have many complaints, except about the end. The Evil Wizard wasn’t much of a tough boss compared to the Necromancer, who was much harder to defeat. He had many phases, which didn’t make up for the fact that he was weak. The phases also proved it was a tedious fight, rather than hard. 

Overall, Castle Crashers was a very fun game, despite it being from 2008. I would really recommend it if you are into games which involve powering through waves of enemies, level through level.

“Castle Crashers is one of my favourite games, I would absolutely adore to see more games like it, its art style is creative and funny, and I am glad I played”.

-Lorcan McGee

“Castle Crashers was very fun to play, especially with friends and we had a lot of fun throughout our playthrough”.

-Stephen McDonnell

Lorcan McGee and Stephen McDonnell – TY Press

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On Wednesday 14th of October TY classes LeBron James and Kevin Hart came in and carved pumpkins. Each one of us got our own pumpkin and carved funny and scary faces on them. After we were finished people who didn’t bring their pumpkin home put them up on top of the lockers for show. We enjoyed carving the pumpkins but a lot of people didn’t like the smell of them and the mess. Ms Kirwan and Ms Rooney did a raffle with the classes for a 10 euro Liffey Valley voucher. A lot of people carved star eyes, a big smile as a mouth and also carved their name on the back of it. After we were all done they let us keep the carving sets. It was a very fun morning.

We want to say thank you to the teachers and staff that organised this activity for us. We all had a lot of fun carving the pumpkins with our friends and making Wednesdays fun.

Sarah Tracey, Lennox Donnan and Chloe Behan – TY Press

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