Amesbury Digest - 29th August

Kia ora e hoe mā,

We were delighted to be able to hold our annual junior invitational cross country event on Thursday last week. We were very lucky with the weather - the event was sandwiched between some very rainy days, but Thursday was quite sunny and thankfully rain-free. 12 local primary schools participated in the fabulous event, sending their top year 1-3 competitors. We will be sending out a separate article congratulating the place getters in the competition, but I would like to take this opportunity to say a huge well done to all Amesbury runners in the cross country country. We were extremely proud of the efforts all runners put into their races, and the spirit and motivation they showed as they competed.

I would also like to thank everyone who helped out on the day, particularly Rachel Qi, Jenny Stevens, Greig Saunders, Jack Mayer, Navy and Gail for their sterling efforts serving up over 600 sausages to hungry runners and ākonga throughout the morning. A monumental vote of thanks needs to go out to Eilis for her fabulous organisation of the whole event. It is a big undertaking to organise and host 12 schools for an event such as this, and pardon the pun, Eilis took it all in her stride. Ka pai - great job, Eilis.

The cross country event was fantastic, not just for the opportunity for our tamariki to take up a challenge and show pride in their efforts and achievements, but also for the chance to come together as a community of schools. It was a great chance to connect with other teachers, parents and whānau, and we have had a lot of feedback about how much people appreciated this. This has made me reflect on a Māori whakatauki (proverb) I like - Waiho i te toipoto, kaua i te toiroa - let us keep close together, not wide apart. Over the next couple of terms we hope to hold a number of events enabling us to come together and connect as a school community and also a wider local community. We will keep you all updated about ways we will look to do this.

In the meantime, kia pai tō wiki - enjoy your week and we hope to see many of you around school over the coming weeks, especially as the weather (hopefully) improves!

Ngā mihi nui,

Urs Cunningham