Kia ora koutou,

I hope that everybody is enjoying an especially long break over the Easter weekend. Many people I have spoken to recently have expressed a need to take a break and slow down for a few days, so hopefully you all get a chance to do this. It is, hopefully, a good opportunity to spend time with family and friends, and enjoy time with your tamariki (children).

As I stop and think about how things have been going at school over the past few weeks, it has been good to reflect on all of the fabulous things I have been seeing. In particular, it has been great to see so many events and activities that have had our tamariki outside and moving in lots of different ways.

• We have had a great response to Movin’ March this year - well done Natalie for all of the hard work that has gone into organising this. We have constantly had streams of bikes and scooters at school, and even a few rollerblades and skates thrown in for good measure!

• Hubs have been very proactive in ensuring students are actively participating in lots of fitness, PE and various sports and movement activities. I loved following the Pōhutukawa inter-whānau group touch rugby competition, and they have now moved on to a very competitive rounders (t-ball) competition! We are now also seeing more training happening in all teams for our cross country, which will happen next term. 

• Our new basketball posts are now finally up, after a few hold ups. They are already very actively being used, both during and after school, which is great to see. If you haven’t tried them out already, come on down and give them a go.

It is wonderful to see all the different ways our ākonga (students) are being active. Our goal now is to keep this going as much as we can. Even though Movin’ March has officially ended, let’s see if we can keep as many of our tamariki as possible walking or wheeling to school, especially given that so many of our families live so close to school.

Speaking of safe movement, I would like to say thank you to the families who have been making a concerted effort to ensure that their tamariki are safely seated and secure when they are travelling in vehicles. In my previous editorial I noted our concern about the number of children who were not doing this at pick up time, with cars often driving off before children were safely restrained in seats. We have noticed more care being taken with this, which is good to see. Please can we all continue to ensure that this happens. This may mean other drivers showing patience in our drop off zone - it can take a minute or two to have all children in a car safely secured in seats, and we can help by patiently allowing people time to do this. It may mean a short wait to get into the drop off area, which is certainly worth it if it keeps our tamariki safe. Thanks to you all for your help and support with this.

We had a new member of staff join our team last week: Gina Quintero is our new release teacher, and she is already settling in really well to our team. Gina is originally from Columbia, and has been living and working in Wellington for the past fourteen years. She has experience working with children in Columbia, the USA, and New Zealand, and we are delighted to have her join our staff.

At the end of this week Grace Baker will leave Amesbury School and head back to Auckland to spend more time with her family. We are thankful to Grace for her contributions to our team during the term, and we wish her and her family all the very best.

Finally, a big thanks to the organisers of our wonderful Easter raffle, which raised just over $1000 - a fabulous effort! Well done to Kalesha, Belinda and Jay for all of your hard work and great organisation with this. It was great to see the excitement of our tamariki when the tickets were being drawn - many sequels and crossed fingers. Thanks to everyone who contributed items for the baskets and/or bought tickets to support the fundraising, and congratulations to all of our lucky winners.

Kia pai tō wiki mutunga - have a great weekend.

Ngā mihi nui,

Urs Cunningham