Kia ora koutou. Talofa. Kia Orana. Malo e lelei. Bula. Fakaalofa atu. Namaste. Kumusta. Haere mai ki Te Kura Huruhuru Ao o Horomaka. Warm greetings to the Hornby High School community.

I love term 4 in our kura. It is a time for completion of projects, for planning new projects, and most of all for celebrating. We celebrate achievement, we celebrate effort, and most of all we celebrate together. Our senior prizegiving was another outstanding event, a wonderful celebration of all that is great about our amazing rangatahi. I always invite supporters from across the community to this event, and every year they comment on the wonderful spirit, the aroha, the pride, that they feel, see, and hear, in our rangatahi as they step forward to receive their well deserved accolades, and also as they celebrate the achievement of their peers. Ours is a very special community, we are truly whānau, and that is an observation that many visitors make. Frankly, it is just ‘the way we are’. To us it is just the normal way of ‘being’.

At the senior prize giving we celebrated Mr Jon Rogers’ 25 years of service to Hornby High School, as he heads towards retirement as our deputy principal. You can see a lovely piece about Jon on the front page of this week’s Western News newspaper.

In writing my own comments on Jon, I was yet again reminded of something that I have long believed to be true. We all too often think of others in terms of ‘what’ they are. She is a teacher, he is a student. What is more important is ‘who’ we are, and this is perhaps best thought of as how we act and how we treat others. Jon’s life has been one of service, one lived with true integrity and real dignity. These are characteristics that define who we are.

Our family and school values are the factors that most determine those behaviours in our children. For Hornby High School, our values of Commitment, Achievement, Resilience, and Respect, are perhaps the most important parts of our school culture. Respect means many things to many people. Respect for ourselves is the basis for everything else. Respect for others can only exist if we respect ourselves. Respect for others means respect for others’ cultures, and our culture defines us in many ways, without it we are like lost souls.

In an assembly last term I asked students simply to ‘be kind’, to allow kindness to be the basis of their relationships with others. I must have been ahead of my time as just a week later the Prime Minister The Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern made a similar call in her address to the United Nations general assembly.

So as we head towards the end of the year, and whatever celebrations that may mean for you, whatever the beliefs (cultural or religious) that may lay behind this time of year for you, let’s make this a time to consider kindness. Our rangatahi are unlikely to receive a more compelling example, a more compelling lesson in life, than that which we give when we show kindness.

Please make sure you follow us on Facebook for the latest and most up to date news https://www.facebook.com/hornbyhighschool/ , and on our new website www.hornby.school.nz . You can also follow my thinking on education at Hornby High School, and more generally, on my blog at https://whakataukihewakaekenoa.blogspot.co.nz/

And remember that we are all only a phone call away if you have any concerns.

Nga mihi nui

Robin Sutton