Kia ora tatou

I am so proud of the way our school has quickly adapted to our bubbles and the way our whānau have supported all of these changes. Our tamariki and kaiako are demonstrating fantastic resilience and show that they can be caring, supportive and flexible.

Our absences continue to increase and this is a sign that everyone is working together to ensure Highfield is a safe environment for learning to take place. Keeping your children at home, when they are unwell, will ensure Highfield continues to provide security and certainty for all families, students and teachers. We have a large number of students who are self isolating as family contacts and an increasing number of positive student cases. Our bubbles are quite flexible and when we have quite a few students away we are beginning to merge these class bubbles together. This particularly works when a particular bubble staff member is away. If your child comes home and says they were taught by a different teacher, this will be the reason!

On a different note Highfield continues to push our gotchas system and this does have such a positive impact on our school culture. Currently students have received 175 20 gotchas, 78 40 gotchas, 25 60 gotchas and 7 80 gotchas. I am such an advocate of building great relationships and our gotcha system creates this strong bond between teachers as well as an understanding of the importance values play in creating well rounded individuals. Highfield continues to work on our restorative practices.

It was wonderful to see students in rooms 1 and 2 dress up as superheroes for Isaac Newth’s birthday. I particularly enjoyed seeing the amount of different spiderman costumes, who would have thought he had such an extensive wardrobe.

A huge thank you to the Sander’s whānau who made up a bag of food goodies for a family in need. This was extremely thoughtful and generous and will be well received.

Please remember that we have our 3 way conferences on Wednesday 13th April. You can sign up for these through school interviews, further information is attached. Our plan is to hold these face to face with all Covid health and safety requirements. Please note that school will be closed for instruction on this day, but it is important to attend these conferences with your child.

Lastly, Highfield continues to drive our strategic plan forward and we are currently working on our AKO areas of: Structured Literacy, Local Curriculum, Assessment and Hero. It is awesome that we are not letting Covid stop this incredible planning and improvement. In our Wellbeing area we continue to monitor all members of our community ensuring that our environment is safe and inclusive and has a positive sense of belonging. Covid has disrupted quite a few areas of our creativity strategic plan, but we are working hard to provide a rich range of sporting, cultural and arts based activities.

Thank you so much for your continued support. Please remember that ‘together we can soar to new heights’.

Ngā mihi

Stu