Tēnā koutou,

This coming Wednesday is 15th March, four years on from the horrific attacks on the Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch. 51 members of the Christchurch Muslim community were killed, and 40 more were injured. 

Al-Ameen Masjid in Newlands will be opening its doors to the wider community between 7 - 9pm on March 15th. Here is their invitation to us all:

On Wednesday it will be 4 years since 51 Muslim New Zealanders’ lives were taken in the most tragic and horrific way.

Al-Ameen will have an open masjid on Wednesday from 7:00PM To 9:00PM. We are very honoured to invite you to Al-Ameen at 64 Kenmore Street, Newlands. We want to say thank you and show our gratitude to all the kiwis who supported us during all these years.

The anniversary of this devastating event is a good opportunity to reflect on the ways we can support and value each other as people living together in Aotearoa New Zealand. 

Strike action: 

A reminder that NZEI (primary teaching union) tumuaki and kaiako will be taking strike action on Thursday this coming week (16th March). School will be closed for instruction on this day.  Please see the Strike Action article in this week's newsletter for more detail. 

Communication

We have been looking at ways to make it easier for parents and whānau to find information. There are a couple of changes we have made to hopefully make our communication spaces clearer:

School website changes: 

On the homepage in the top right right hand corner there are four icons. We have changed a couple of them to make them more useful.

• The book icon takes you to our hub learning sites. This is a landing page that has a button taking you directly to each of our hub learning sites. Each hub learning site is where the weekly timetable and weekly learning is stored, and there are links at the top of the site to take you to other areas of learning. These sites are used by ākonga to access their ongoing learning (in Harakeke and Pōhutukawa ākonga), and they can also be used to keep up with some learning in your child is away from school for any length of time.

• The Facebook icon takes you directly to our school facebook page.

• The Hero icon takes you to our Hero site. If you are using a device that has your key passwords stored, it should take you directly to your own Hero account.
• The shopping trolley icon takes you to our school shop. Again, if you are using a known device, it should take you to your login page.
  

Digest changes:

• The digest format has changed somewhat, to make it look more like a newsletter. It comes out weekly, and has all of the key information for the week ahead. It will always have a ‘What’s on this week’ list of highlights on the left hand side, which pulls out the key things happening in the week. On the right it will have a ‘School Notices’ article, that will have a bit more detail about the week ahead, along with other useful bits of information. Most weeks the digest will have an article from me (‘From the Tumuaki / Principal’) which will keep you updated with things happening at school and also out in the wider community. Other articles included each week try to keep you updated about trips and events coming up, learning that is happening, and things that are going on around school.

Our weekly communications are sent out as a digest each Friday. These are housed on Hero, and you will be sent an email notification when the digest has been published. You can also access the digests on the homepage of our school website, if you scroll down a little.

We will keep looking for ways to make our communications and access to information as clear as possible. If you have other suggestions, feel free to email them through to me (urs.cunningham@amesbury.school.nz) or John, our communications manager, (communications@amesbury.school.nz). We always look to be as useful and clear as possible in our comms, although it is worth bearing in mind that people are looking for different things, so what one person may find useful, another person may find hard to follow. It can be quite a balancing act at times!

Kia pai tō wiki, enjoy your week ahead.

Ngā mihi nui, 

Urs Cunningham