Kia ora Koutou

These are exciting times in Deaf Education. As we move towards the merger of both Deaf Education Centres, we embrace the opportunity for change this offers. While we want to maintain those high-quality services we are delivering well, at the same time we want to design new processes which will ensure the future wellbeing and achievement of our Deaf and hard of hearing students.

We are grateful to our staff from KDEC and van Asch DECs who are working hard to build relationships and develop joint projects. Such collaborative work is already allowing us to share best practice in technology, communication and curriculum design.

Communication with parents and whanau is an area we are putting a good deal of energy into this year. Partnership with parents is really important to us. You are the experts on your children’s lives, and we have much to learn from you. We support children best, when we support each other and maintain good communication around the learning of the child. We want to work with you so that together we can deliver solutions to the needs of your children and our learners.

Recently, both Principals met with the president of Deaf Children NZ to understand the experiences and challenges facing the parents of our students. This was followed in early June by our attendance at the AGM of Deaf Children NZ. This was a wonderful opportunity to catch up on the issues for parent groups around New Zealand and it helped us to consider new creative ways to communicate with you. Already our Facebook page has improved our ability to share student news and information with you. Soon we hope to develop a mobile app for parents so that we can connect with you more regularly and share links to Facebook and our website.

We hope you enjoy this newsletter and some of the great projects happening for our learners around New Zealand. We particularly love to see pictures of our smiling, happy, young people enjoying activities outside the classroom. You have told us how much these types of activities mean for students and we are committed to continuing them. They bring joy and promote student wellbeing and they challenge the negative stereotypes about what it means to be Deaf.

Wishing you a happy and safe holiday break with your families.

Kind Regards Louise & Bernie