Tēnā koutou katoa,

It has been so lovely welcoming parents and whānau back into school for several events over the past couple of weeks, first with our cross country and then with our learning celebration. We thoroughly enjoyed sharing the learning from inquiry module 1 and term 1 with ākonga and their families across the school on Friday, and we have had lots of great feedback from whānau who also enjoyed it. I spent time during the celebration sharing learning with a range of ākonga across the school - talking with AJ about traders sailing to Aotearoa, chatting with Isabella and Rosie about Kupe and the giant wheke, discussing with Nivaan about Kate Sheppard and her fight for women’s rights, and having Kingsley and Brooklyn show me ways to accurately draw a human eye and shade it well. It reminded me of the breadth of learning that has happened across the first 13 weeks of the year so far, and of the pride our tamariki show in their accomplishments. Huge thanks to all of our whānau who came into school to share the learning with our ākonga, and we were impressed yet again with the way you not only share learning with your own tamariki, but also take the time to engage with other students so that they can share with you, too - a lovely trait in our community.

As part of our learning sharing and celebration, we presented our first set of Amesbury Awesomeness awards earlier this week. Huge congratulations to Zara from Koru Hub, Marcus from Harakeke Hub, and Livvie from Pōhutukawa Hub, who were the recipients of our first awards. There is an article celebrating their achievements in this digest.

While we are celebrating, there is one role within our school that I would like to highlight here, because it is one that many people may not know about. Over the past year we have been very fortunate to have Yamama Abdulqadir working with us as a bilingual support worker in our kura. We received funding for this role by working with another school in our cluster and applying together for some additional support for students who are recent migrants to Aotearoa New Zealand.

Yamama works for five hours each week supporting some of our tamariki who speak Arabic. She works very closely with Gemma, our ELL (English Language Learners) teacher, and together they have grown this role into something that not only supports our tamariki in their learning, but also supports their whānau and our school staff to connect with each other’s cultures and ways of being. We have all learned and grown our knowledge through Yamama’s support. Her positive, calm and caring way of being is a huge asset to our school community, and we are very lucky to have her as part of our team.

The bilingual support role has been a little known but very powerful part of our school community for the past year and, wonderfully, it has now grown in our wider Kāhui Ako. Last year two schools were part of this collaboration, and now five of our schools have joined together and increased the support for migrant students in our wider community. Amesbury School is part of this group, and we are extremely pleased to have another year of additional support.

This leads me to finish with a whakatauki (Māori proverb) that Jenny, one of our associate principals, shared in our staff digest for this week: Ko te ahurei o te tamaiti aroha o tatou mahi - let the uniqueness of the child guide our work. 

Kia pai to wiki - have a good week, and we look forward to starting our new science inquiry module at school this week.

Ngā mihi nui,

Urs Cunningham