From our Tumuaki / Principal

Korihi ake ngā manu, takiri mai te ata. Ka ao, kao, ka awatea. Tihei, mauri ora; The birds call, a fresh day unfurls. A new dawn, the promise of a new day.

Ngā mihi nui kia koutou katoa, warm greetings to you all for the start of our new school year. A very warm welcome to new families, ākonga (students) and teachers starting with us, and a warm welcome to our returning whānau.

I hope you all had a lovely summer break with whānau and friends. I spent three weeks in the UK, reconnecting with family and friends, and had a fabulous time. I spent some time down in London, where much of my extended family is now based, and that was noisy and chaotic and huge fun. I also spent some time in Liverpool, where my family is from and where I grew up. I had not been back there in over ten years and it was wonderful to reconnect with people and places, and spend time wandering down memory lane. My Liverpool accent has also possibly got a little stronger again! However, it’s also lovely to now be back home in the warmth, where the sunlight doesn’t begin to fade at about 3pm.

And so we now look to a new school year. Over the past few days staff have been back onsite, reconnecting, chatting together, and planning and prepping for the year. It has been great hearing about amazing summer breaks, with a range of far flung travel, trips closer to home, and staycations in the mix for our team. We have been getting to know new staff and settling into our new structure of two hubs across the school.

This year promises to be an exciting one, with lots of fabulous and fun learning planned. You have hopefully all received a Term 1 whānau email from your child’s whānau teacher, introducing themselves and sharing some detail about organisation and learning for the term ahead. On Friday this coming week we will also hold our annual Meet ‘n Greet community event, where our team will introduce themselves and talk about the structure and organisation of the hub. There is an article in this digest with more information about this event.

We look forward to seeing all of our ākonga back at school on Tuesday, and to welcoming new ākonga to our community. Hopefully we will see many of you over the next few days, and at our Meet ‘n’ Greet event next Friday. In the meantime, have a lovely weekend, enjoy the continued sunshine (hopefully), and hei tērā wiki - see you next week.

Ngā mihi nui, 

Urs Cunningham