It made my day yesterday to be given a sample of the delicious peach crumble the boys made. The fruit came from Caleb's Grandad's tree. Yum!

Yesterday, I had lunch with Tristan and Oliver as Tristan's star values treat.  It was lovely to spend some time with such kind and polite boys.  

Well done to the students who competed in the North West Zone swimming competition on Tuesday.  Every participant does so well to make it to this event.   A special thank you to Rozz Guillemot and Matua Peri for the extra time they gave to before school training sessions.

I know that we are all still in shock over the events of Friday and our hearts go out to everyone who has been directly affected.  

At the very heart of our strong multi-cultural community, we celebrate many languages, customs, and beliefs.  To think that something was done to purposely upset our celebrated diversity and cause such harm is just so terribly wrong.

After a few days of speaking with people and reading the opinions of very eloquent and qualified people, I'm not sure I have too many more words to offer.  One thing I would like to say is that I am hopeful that this awful event will shape our young people's values and beliefs in a positive way.   I think our young people are incredible and I am confident of their actions in the future.

We are keeping a watchful eye over all of our students. We have a lot of information and support available which we have been accessing.    Please speak to us about your little people's concerns, we are here to help.   

Tomorrow some schools and organisations are having a colour/mufti day to support the families who have been affected by Friday's tragedy. Merrin School will not be holding a mufti/colour day tomorrow.  Currently, our Muslim families are attending ceremonies and it is our wish to work with our families, to do something with their input.  We absolutely will be fundraising and we will let you know what this will be in the coming days/week.  

I understand that it is in our DNA as New Zealander's to want to help and 'do' as we all grieve.  Perhaps at this early stage, supporting our fatigued emergency service personnel would be a great thing to do?

Tomorrow, we will be observing 2 minutes of silence to stand as one and to show our respect to everyone affected by Friday's tragedy.  Our children will waiata and haka and then move into the silence period.  This will take place on the main court and we invite you to join us at 2.50pm tomorrow.  The timing of this is to provide you an opportunity to join us. 

As a staff, we have been so grateful for your kind emails and yummy treats to thank us for Friday's lockdown.  I remain extremely proud of our staff, I couldn't have worked with a better group of professionals on Friday afternoon!

That being said, we all hope we will never have to use the lockdown procedure again! However, we must be prepared and we have already begun our self-review process.  We will be calling on you as parents, for your feedback.  What became apparent to me as we entered Friday's lockdown was that whilst we have practised the procedure with our students and staff, we have never (and no one I know of has), ever practised it with our families.  We must start doing this in the future.

Best wishes, for a safe and restful weekend.

As-salāmu 'Alaykum - peace be upon you

Lisa Dillon-Roberts