This week we acknowledge and celebrate the cultural diversity we have here at Lemonwood Grove | Te Uru Tarata.

Cultural Diversity is one of the key Principles in the New Zealand Curriculum.  As a school we have a responsibility to ensure our school based curriculum reflects New Zealand's cultural diversity and values the histories and traditions of all its people.  

With nearly 300 learners, Lemonwood Grove is already a very culturally diverse school as you will see from the statistics below:

Australian 1

Cambodian 1

Fijian 1

Tongan 1

Korean 1

Canadian 1

Ukraine 1

Samoan 2

Japanese 2

Vietnamese 2

Romanian 2

Sri Lankan 3

Chinese 4

Indian 8

NZ Maori 17

Filipino 18

South African 31

NZ European 172

So what are we doing to ensure we are being culturally responsive to the needs of our community and learners? 

Being a new school it has been small steps initially as the major focus for us over the last 2.5 years, has been to establish an overall learning culture at LWG however over this time we have developed some really effective approaches. 

At the board of trustees level, Hayley Stirling is the Cultural Responsiveness Chair and works really effectively with the board and staff to implement actions formulated in our 2019 action plan (see link below). Some of these actions came for example from our whānau Hui (consultation) last year.

LWG Cultural Responsiveness Plan 2019

Lisa Collier has been leading a staff Cultural Responsiveness Professional Learning group this year. They also use  this action plan to implement initiatives across the school. Our Matariki Celebration is an idea that came from this plan.

It has been really rewarding to reach out to some of our culturally rich families recently. Last week Maree gathered a group of our Filipino families together to talk about how we can learn together as well as strengthen our relationship with each other. 

A big 'shout out' to all our tamariki who helped out at the working bee. This was a great opportunity to engage with our school community. To all of you who couldn't make it but provided food for afternoon tea, again thank you. The new raised garden beds and picnic tables look awesome! 

Our learners are really looking forward to our Matariki Celebration on Friday and leading discussions around their learning at AKO Conferences next week.

Regards

Sean | Tumuaki

principal@lemonwoodgrove.school.nz