Tena Koutou te kura Tuarua o Raukapuka whanau,

We are over halfway through this term and I hope that our students have taken into action the school whakatauki for the year - Whāia te iti kahurangi’ - Being your best! 

Our whakatauki links with our vision 'to inspire and empower' and we are working hard to ensure this vision resonates through everything we do here at Geraldine. Our vision and our goals are outlined in the poster below. These goals were created by our team based on the feedback we received from our whanau, students and staff. You may recall filling out a survey or writing down the key values you felt were important for your child to gain whilst at Geraldine high school.

I spoke in our recent assembly about what it means to be your best and felt it worthwhile repeating the message in my article so that you are all aware of our goals for the year.

Over the last 5 weeks students have had an opportunity in every subject class, every event, every whanau class to be their best. I hope that they have focused on this as doing this will bring success as well as develop our values of respect, responsibility, relationships and achievement.

Unfortunately, some of our students have begun the year by choosing not to give their best and in some cases  to do nothing or worse still - to distract others from their learning. Some students have chosen to be disrespectful to the adult in their class whether it is one of our teachers or a reliever.

My questions to those students are;

• What do you hope to achieve by doing nothing? both this year and for your future.

• What impression do you give people both in and out of school by showing none of our values?

• How will that help you gain a job if you can’t be respectful to others?

• How do you expect to have success if you don’t put any effort in?

These questions are not just for school - they are for life, for any job, any career or pathway you take.

Our vision is ‘to inspire and empower’ and we want our students to be inspired in their learning and the opportunities available and for them to have the skills, knowledge and attitude to be empowered to be the best version of themselves. But they have to engage in school to do this.

To the many of students who have started the year by being engaged in their learning and the opportunities over the last 5 weeks - well done and we look forward to celebrating their successes throughout this year.

It was my pleasure to welcome Louisa Prattley, a past student of Geraldine High School, to speak to our students. Louisa has - without question - given her best since leaving school and is achieving some incredible things in her career.

She has been inspired and empowered on her journey from school and is now inspiring others at the University of Canterbury. You can watch her speech and hopefully feel as inspired as we were during the assembly!

If you would like to hear more from Louisa you can check her out on linkedIn.