Kia ora koutou katoa

Week 9 has been a busy one!

 On Monday, JPII hosted 230 educators and education support staff from our Māwhera Greymouth Kāhui Ako schools for a restorative practices day. Facilitated by Greg Jansen and Rich Matla, it was a great opportunity for us to connect as an education community to grow and share effective practices to enhance our approaches to challenging behaviour. For many of us, this was an important refresh, and for others an opportunity to learn about restorative approaches. At JPII, restorative practices underpin our approach to pastoral care. It puts restoring harm to relationships at the centre, and it dovetails perfectly with our Catholic Character. We will continue to build on this mahi with Greg and Rich over the next few years as we embed restorative practices in our school.

Tomorrow night we celebrate the school ball in fine style with the theme ‘Enchanted Wonderland.’ Special thanks to Mrs Susan Smith and her team of Year 12 & 13 helpers for bringing this long-anticipated event together. We will share some photos of the night in next week’s newsletter. We wish all our attendees a safe and memorable evening!

You would no doubt have heard this week that our other local high schools have had to close their doors due to staff illnesses. This is a difficult decision for any leadership team to make, and we send our best to our colleagues. We currently have no staff away with covid, and only a handful of students. Our attendance rate is tracking at 85% on average, down from term 1 which was 92% on average. We have no plans to close next week and are pleased to be finishing the term in person. There is no doubt that masks make a difference, and we implore everyone to keep ‘masking up’, even with mask fatigue setting in.

If you know of anyone looking to send their children to the best high school on the Coast, please send them our way on Wednesday night from 5-7:30pm for our Open Evening. This is happening in MM1, with the Science Fair in the hall. We’ve got a sausage sizzle happening to keep any hunger pangs at bay, and we look forward to meeting our next fantastic cohort of JPII students.

Mid-year reports will be emailed home next Friday.

Have a safe and enjoyable weekend.

Ngā mihi nui

Renée Hutchinson