Integrity | Kia Pono . Respect | Kia Manaaki . Courage | Kia Māia

I hope this message finds you well and that you've had a positive week.

Thank you to all those parents who attended Year 7 Camp at Shakespear Regional park last week. We were graced with a whole week of sunshine for a Sunday set up, and 5 days of camping and outdoor activities for 400 students. Our tremendous gratitude and appreciation to all the senior leaders and teachers who planned, implemented activities, cooked food and simply poured all their love and energy to give our students the best learning experience.

For our new families and whānau to AJHS, our school is a part of a Kāhui Ako (Community of Schools), that are our feeder schools within the wider Albany community. Our Kāhui Ako is coined Whānau ki te Ako. The schools that are in this group are Upper Harbour School, Albany School, Albany Senior High School (ASHS), Ridgeview School and Coatesville School. The Principals that lead our Whānau ki te Ako are Claire Amos, the Principal of ASHS, and Sue Smith, the Principal of Upper Harbour School. It is such a productive approach for our community of schools, to work together to strengthen our teaching and learning pathways for our students and families.

As a school, we are committed to establishing open, honest and mutually supportive relationships with all our parents and whānau. As you can imagine, with over 1200 students now, it is sometimes challenging to ensure our communication and response is timely enough for our parents who need support and guidance. This is especially the case when we have more serious student scenarios which require more in depth investigation, which can take several days. Please always be aware that our leadership personnel work as cohesively and speedily as they can, but this can be difficult at times amongst a very busy school life. Furthermore, like all humans, we can make mistakes; seldom but it can happen. We are a school that is honest about this, as acknowledging errors creates opportunities for learning and developing skills and refining systems. Our aim is to work with our community for everyone’s learning journey.

We are very excited for our annual Summer Gala in 2 weeks. We look forward to seeing our school community for this celebratory event on Saturday 16 March starting at 10am. Please come and say hi at the bake sale where I am working with the team.

Have a wonderful weekend e te whānau and take care.

Nga mihi nui ki a koutou katoa.

Cushla Shepherd, Principal/Tumuaki

Albany Junior High School

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