Amesbury Digest - 26th October

Tēnā koutou e hoa ma,

Firstly, a reminder that if you would prefer to receive this message, or indeed any of our articles, in a different language, please click on the language select button above and choose the language you would prefer.

Last week we held our first Board of Trustees meeting of the term. We decided to complete all of our ‘business as usual’ items as a virtual meeting, allowing us to use the time to meet kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face) to discuss the really important business of school boards - what we want to achieve for our tamariki and our community, and what will help us to do this. As a Board we reviewed our current school charter and talked about aspects we felt needed to be in our new charter. It was a very engaging session and it reminded me yet again of how exciting it is when you get into the deep discussions about the purpose of education and the core business of schools in preparing our tamariki for their future.

One of the things that became apparent to me during the session was how clear our leadership team is on what it is we are trying to achieve. It also became clear how much language we have created around our vision, how many ‘Amesbury meanings’ we have for certain words, and how powerful that language can be when it is shared. I can clearly see that we need to do better in sharing this language with our community, so you all have a shared understanding of what it is we are trying to achieve together. Part of our current work around our school charter will look at sharing and explaining this language, and we will look for ways to continue doing this next year.

Through our discussions and feedback so far, we can see that preparing for a future in which Covid is a way of life is going to be very important to us. How do we stay connected as a community and have a shared sense of belonging when we cannot meet kanohi ki te kanohi - face to face? How do we support our tamariki and maintain strong, meaningful learning when they cannot come onsite to learn for periods of time? These are clearly going to be some of the aspects we will include in our new school charter, along with other things.

We would now like you all to be part of feeding into our new charter as well. A charter is the key planning document for a school over three years. It lays out who we are as a school, what we want for our tamariki, and it lays out some goals that we want to work on over the three year period. In this digest there is an article about the next phase of consultation (online, unfortunately, as we are still in level 2), and it would be good to have as many parents and whānau be part of this feedback as possible. Please read the article and engage with the feedback to share your hopes and thoughts around the learning our tamariki need. Thank you all for your support and engagement with this.

Finally, well done to our community for raising $551 for Wellington Free Ambulance on the final day of last term. There was a dazzling array of fabulous onesies and flash pyjamas on show. It was a fun day at school, with the added bonus of raising money for a fabulous local cause.

Enjoy the extra day of holiday this weekend with your whānau, and long may this glorious sunshine last.

Ngā mihi, 

Urs Cunningham