He aha te mea nui o te ao. He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.
What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.

The English Faculty warmly welcomes you to the 2022 academic year.

The English team has been delighted with the calibre and vibrancy of the teaching staff who have recently joined the faculty in 2022. We welcome Mrs Claudine Tapsell, Mrs Christine Fildes, Ms Tess Cattermole, Ms Sandi Harrison and Mr Michael Cotton to the English team this year. Sadly, we farewelled Ms Poppie Johnson, who is off to be Head of Writing at the Education Perfect. Our congratulations and best wishes go with her.

In terms of our learning programmes, please check your son’s or daughter’s Google Classroom posts for the course outlines with the calendar of assessments and do not hesitate to contact their English teachers for further information.

We will be reminding students to partake in the many vibrant opportunities on offer throughout the year. Please keep an eye out for some of the vibrant opportunities on offer: The iScribe writing competition will decide upon the writing trophies; in Year 11 there is the Dimmock Cup, Year 12 the Malcolm Anderson Cup and in Year 13, the Kahukura Cup. We also have the Carville Cup for public speaking, the Denise Winskill Trophy for performance poetry and a Junior Oratory Cup which is decided at our iSay speech competition. iCandy is our ever-popular short film and documentary competition and there are writing clubs, performance poetry workshops, radio shows and debating groups running year-round.

Please diarise the following key dates:

• Poetry and Flash Fiction competitions - Thursday 7 April
• Year 9 Whaikōrero presentation - Thursday 26 May
• iSay speech competition - Tuesday 5 July
• Essay and Parable competitions - Thursday 30 June
• Short story competitions -Thursday 22 September
• iCandy film fest - Thursday 27 October

One new initiative that will be embedded in English classrooms will encourage personal reading. We all understand that reading is incredibly beneficial; it expands our vocabularies, helps us to empathise, to critically think, reduces stress and may even assist in curing us of our current doom-scrolling. Students from all year levels will start each English lesson with sustained silent reading, and there will be an expectation that students will engage in rich conversations to reflect on the texts chosen. We will be continuing to work closely with our wonderful librarians to ensure students have access to well-chosen texts. One way you can foster a love of reading is to have conversations with your children about their reading and to encourage them to get into regular, nightly reading routines.

Mahia ngā mahi kei tamariki ana.
Do the work while you are young.

Whatever their talents and interests, we encourage our rangatahi to explore what’s on offer here at Cashmere, to unleash their true potential. The English Faculty feel very privileged to have been entrusted with such talented students and we look forward to working with you all this year.

Mrs Michelle McDonald and Mr Brett McKersey