Kia ora koutou

*Visit of Dr Yinuo Li

*"Meet the Candidates", 7pm, Thursday, 30th May

*Rubbish-free lunches

*Korean Cooking Class - 11am, Thursday, 30th May

Learning: It is the end of a busy week with plenty of exciting learning happening at Amesbury School. The students have been currently doing some immersion activities as preparation for moving into their ourTime project which has a focus on contributing to the world and making it a better place.

Visit by Dr Yinuo Li: On Friday, the sun's warmish rays arrived at just the right time and we had a wonderful visit from Dr Yinuo Li and a couple of Senior Leaders from her ETU School which has campuses in Silicon Valley, Beijing and Guangzhou, China. We shared our philosophies of education and it became clear that though we use different language to describe them, our philosophies are very similar. We discovered we have a lot in common, so we are going to keep in touch and explore what our schools might be able to do together in the future. As I said in an earlier digest, in her work life, Dr Li is the Director for China of the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation.

BOT Elections and 'Meet the Candidates': Well, we definitely have a BOT election with 8 nominations being submitted prior to midday on Friday. Gail will be sending out a booklet on Monday with each candidate's statement and the voting papers. However, we are organizing a "Meet the Candidates" meeting on Thursday evening at 7pm. Each candidate will be given a few minutes to talk about themselves. There will be panel questions and then the floor will be opened for questions. This meeting will happen in Mawhero (through the library and the first suite on the left in Harakeke Hub). 

Rubbish: I am becoming increasingly concerned about the amount of rubbish I am finding around the school. Most of it is packaging and plastic wrap from morning teas and lunches. We have a take home rubbish policy which was developed and implemented by students a number of years ago  and we still believe it is a good policy because it encourages rubbish free lunches. The problem with the packaging that often comes as part of students' food supplies, other than the obvious well-known fact that our world cannot continue to cope with the amount of rubbish we are generating, is that the Wellington wind so easily whips it out of students' lunchboxes and it is gone before the students even know it. 

I noticed the other day that quite a number of students have lovely rubbish free lunchboxes which have a number of compartments for different foods so that food does not need to be wrapped. I would like to see all children with rubbish free lunch boxes - it will be better for the school environment and it will be better for the world. To make this easy for you, we have rubbish free lunch boxes available for purchase on our school shop website. 

This is a really simple way to show care for our environment. 

Korean cooking session: There are still a couple of places available at the Korean Cooking Class being offered by Seonghye, the mother of one of our students. The cost is $15.00 to cover ingredients and it will provide lunch. Please let me know if you are interested in attending.

Nga mihi nui

Lesley