Boldness Ko ngā rangatahi ināianei, a, ko ngā rangatira āpōpo The youth of today will be the chiefs of tomorrow

Kia ora koutou katoa

In the last few weeks our community has been faced with the challenges of early winter with a large amount of student sickness, followed by teacher sickness. Despite this, we have managed to keep teachers in front of classes each day and are grateful to have a small yet dedicated team of relieving and part time teachers who help us out regularly. Hopefully we have all had our share of winter ills now and can put that behind us!   Please do keep your children away from school is they are unwell.

The Aotearoa Rock Stars project has been gaining traction in the community.  Each Thursday we have a group of students working at the Leacroft Street Greengrocer, the YMCA and the Bishopdale Library. The purpose of this project is to lift the profile of Te Reo Māori in our local community and to promote healthy lifestyle choices along the way. We have been fortunate to have the opportunity to be part of this pilot project with PHD student Teariki Tuiono from UC. There has been plenty of media interest in this project so watch this space, the children may well be in featured in local/national media! There is an article about this project in this publication.

We were really pleased with the participation of our students in the recent cross country and the way so many of them accepted the challenge to complete three laps of the course. We totally understand that cross country running is not everybody’s idea of fun and love the way our children just get in and give it a go anyway. That is what we mean when we talk about Breens kids being BOLD and BRAVE.  

Congratulations also to all those children who took part in the 40 Hour Famine last weekend!

This time of the year is super busy for our teachers, many of whom are involved in managing and coaching sports teams. Many thanks to Jono Collins for his coordination of the sports opportunities on Tuesdays and to those teachers who have stepped up to coach and manage. We are fortunate to have a team of dedicated parents who help out with our water polo teams, overseen by teacher Gillian O’Hara. It is quite the commitment with Sunday evening trainings and Monday/Friday evening games at the pool! We also have seven basketball teams playing on Friday evenings at the YMCA, overseen by Nathan Maclennan. We have a small team of teachers coaching and managing these teams but are so grateful to those parents who have offered to help also. The teachers would welcome an extra pair of hands so if you are keen to help out from time to time with sport we would still love to hear from you!

It is also a busy time in the Arts area. The new boys choir shirts have arrived and look super smart. They will feature for the first time at next week’s North West music festival and we are excited to see and hear our strong and beautiful choir perform at the Aurora Centre. Music teacher Maggie Alley (and assistant Jill Plank) have done an outstanding job preparing these young singers!

The school production “You’re History” will take place at the end of next term and auditions will be held in the next few weeks for lead roles. Fun times ahead as we prepare for everybody to be involved in this!

We are very excited to see the new building nearly completely enclosed with the final windows being installed this week. We are planning for the Aoraki and Hereora teams to be in those buildings towards the end of term three and we can’t wait!

A friendly reminder about meeting with our staff at school. We are always very happy to meet with parents but out of respect please make an appointment ahead of time so we can ensure we are available.

As always, thank you for your support of our Breens school community.

Ngā mihi nui

Warm Regards

Nikki