Tēnā koutou katoa, Mālō e lelei. Welcome back to 2020. I trust you all have had a fantastic summer and a good start to the school year.

Term One is always a busy term, with lots of trips and school events like swimming sports and athletics day. We have tried a new format for the start of year. This is to better support the transition of our Year 7 students into the College and to allow all our students to build better connections with each other and our staff - Whakawhanaungatanga. It also allowed us to include a number of key College events and administration activities which meant that once the timetable commenced students would experience fewer disruptions. We look forward to collecting feedback from staff, students and parents/whānau about how they found this day.

2020 brings with it many exciting opportunities to build on our success of 2019. Please encourage your child to make the most of all these opportunities, seek help when they need it and to be proud to be a Katikati College student. Please look out for more information in our community mail out which will arrive in your letterboxes this week.

Towards the end of 2019 there was a lot of discussion about my Principalship and so I thought it useful to start the year by sharing my vision for the College with you all. Below is a modified version of the speech I have given to our staff which articulates my vision for our College. It has remained the same since my appointment in 2017 and it guides my actions and decisions everyday as the principal at Katikati College.

Principal’s Vision

We have just one chance to get educating our youth right! Just one chance.

To get it right we need to maximise the potential within our students and help them believe in themselves.

I believe people's potential is limitless and as leaders of learning we are collectively responsible for unleashing the potential within our learners by providing innovative, authentic, engaging programmes and opportunities to collaborate. Creating new ways of building and understanding knowledge to ensure all our learners achieve their personal best is our job.

My goal over the last three years has been to get to know everyone and develop positive, trusting, respectful relationships. I wish to take my vision for education and work with you all to make it better and relevant for Katikati College.

The vision and strategic plan we co-construct for the school will allow us to navigate our way through the 21st Century education landscape. It reflects our values and what is important to our learning community. This has allowed our students to catch the knowledge wave and has supported them to become good citizens and the best versions of themselves.

I believe it is the Principal’s responsibility to support and encourage the building of professional capabilities within our staff and provide leadership opportunities to increase the professional capital within the learning community. To get the best out of our people, we need them to want to be the best, believe they can be the best and work together to make each other better.

This is NOT leadership from the top, but leadership from within, with all stakeholders ‘leading up’, contributing, problem-solving and reflecting on how we can improve together.

I wish to see us all working collaboratively and cohesively, sharing our expertise and building an understanding of what success looks like for our students and ourselves. All this will help to establish a culture of trust and mutual respect, so that we can challenge ourselves and each other without feeling intimidated, threatened or undervalued.

We all need to be constantly involved in school reflection, evaluation and using evidence for decision making. We all need to work together to define priorities, create solutions, celebrate success, aligning ourselves, our resources and our students so that we realise our shared vision.

As the Principal I believe it is my job, along with the Strategic Executive Team (SET) and the Board of Trustees (BOT), to clearly define our learning objectives, mobilise resources and eliminate barriers to learning, thus enabling our staff to do their jobs, to effectively achieve the objectives, while maintaining work/life balance and ensuring staff and student well-being.

Our staff is our most valuable resource. They are the ones who change our students’ lives, the ones who ignite student passion and light the fire in their bellies.

Together we can offer our students learning opportunities that are relevant, responsive, authentic, and prepare them their way for ‘their future’.

We all have a part to play - every person, teacher, support staff, parent and whanau member. We are all responsible for keeping our students safe, engaged, motivated and for creating an environment where they can believe in themselves.

Over the next few months we will be running workshops, consulting our community and using committees to help collect and collate information to use to build a framework for our new vision and strategic direction. The BOT and SET will work together to provide opportunities to collaborate and review our findings, distilling out what is most important to our Katikati learning community and formulating a way forward.

We will also use teacher inquiry to evaluate the effectiveness of our teaching practices and identify key focus areas and goals to support our vision.

The future of our students is in OUR hands. We all need to make sure that this one chance counts. Students deserve every opportunity to be the best versions of themselves and so do we!

As the Principal, I have and will always advocate and act to ensure the best is what Katikati College students and community get.

Following up with Carolyn

If there is any aspect of my vision that resonates with you or that you would like more information about please do not hesitate to contact me to make time to discuss this further principal@katikaticollege.school.nz. This invitation is also extended to anyone wanting to clarify information they may have heard in the community recently about my leadership of the College or decisions made. I strongly encourage my staff and our students to check a story by going to the source before passing information on, as there are often only a few words that separate fact from fiction.

Here’s to another amazing year at Katikati College. We will continue to develop a clear understanding for all members of our learning community of what ‘being in the right place, at the right time, doing the right thing’ looks like, sounds like and feels like.

May your year be filled with lots of laughter, adventure and learning!

Carolyn Pentecost

Principal/ Tumuaki

KATIKATI COLLEGE