Kia ora tātou

It is wonderful to see our students back at school this morning. The energy they bring with them is a real gift, and it reminds all of us as staff about why we love our jobs!

Thank you for the appreciative emails that have been sent in the last few days. Positive feedback gives us confidence that we structured the last three weeks of learning for your children the right way. It is good to see so many wearing masks, and we have disposable masks at the office for students who have forgotten theirs.

I would like to congratulate Matua Tim Lucas on his appointment to Principal of St Peter Chanel School. Tim is very excited by this opportunity and he is looking forward to becoming part of a new, but still Kavanagh-connected school community from the beginning of Term 4.

It is that time of year when staffing changes are planned for 2022. As a result, Mrs Kathleen O’Kane has let me know that she will be finishing up at the end of this year after many, many years of service to our college, the most recent being as DRS and as part of the senior leadership team during the last couple of terms. I know that Kathleen is looking forward to the new adventures awaiting her within a much more flexible ‘timetable’.

Our thoughts are with St Bernadette’s Primary School as they begin their classes today without one of their long term support staff, Janice Shaw, who passed away during the lockdown period. Please continue to keep in your prayers, those members of our school community who have experienced great sickness and death in their families during the lockdown period.

We began today as a school with a liturgy that included the well-known song ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ which takes its words from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. It is important for us to remember that God has us in his hands, and we need to trust in him and continue to have hope. Everything happens for a reason and at the right time - just not always the time we would want it. Sometimes we need to step back and recognise that.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.