Kia ora koutou.

Welcome back to term 2, 2018. Here’s hoping for a great term. It seems to have started off at a great clip. There is so much going on in education at the moment and everything seems pretty frantic. MLEs (Modern Learning Environments) are continuing to take a hammering with some pretty uninformed views and comments being expressed. I have included a link below to an article which I published online at the end of last year in response to the debate. I have shared it before, but you may wish to read it again to help you formulate some responses to people who might challenge the fact that your child attends an MLE.

Enough is enough! The ‘Traditional Education versus the Modern Learning Environment’ Binary

This article seems to be having a resurgence on social media at the moment, perhaps in response to some of the negative media articles. I am planning to write another response in the next few days.

Visit by HH Sheikh Abdullah: What a great opportunity it was to have His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan to visit our school. The school looked fantastic (thanks Gail, Brian and the Wellington weather) and we had a wonderful, friendly visit with Sheikh Abdullah and his large entourage. It seems that the visit was enjoyed by all. Ministry officials, even yesterday, were still buzzing about how wonderfully well it went and how much they loved the school and the use of space etc. As I said, your children were amazing and really rose to the occasion. Please find below a couple of links to articles that were released by the Sheikh's media team about the visit.

Article with You Tube clip on Sharjah

Sheikh visits Prime Minister and Amesbury School

Fleeces: I have been made aware that some parents are expressing considerable frustration about the loss of fleeces. I have asked teachers to come up with some strategies to improve the situation, which they have done. However, I have not asked them to take full responsibility for solving the problem. Teachers could spend time every day making sure that every child who brought his/her fleece to school has his/her own fleece at the end of the day, and then they could follow the children around making sure that they actually end up taking it home with them and don’t drop it out on the field or somewhere similar etc. This could eliminate 99% of the loss, but it would take a huge amount of teachers’ time every day and I know that parents don’t want this. I think that solving this problem could be a shared responsibility. The truth is, fleeces don’t just disappear. If they are missing, they have probably gone home with the wrong child by mistake. It would be very helpful for parents to check their child’s fleece every night to make sure they have the right one – this would be better than each teacher lining up 25 students and checking their fleeces. If it isn’t the right one, then if parents could let the teacher know immediately and send the fleece back the next day, the chances are that the child’s fleece will still be in lost property. There is also a responsibility on children to look after their gear. If teachers and parents take full responsibility for solving the fleece problem, then students will not learn to take responsibility themselves. Both teachers and parents need to work with students to help them to develop the value and skill of looking after their gear. I hope that you consider this a reasonable response to what I can see is a very frustrating and expensive problem. Please do let me know if you have any other ideas that might help.

Enjoy the rest of the week.

Nga mihi nui