I enjoyed spending time with Ryan as he recited many of the numbers he knows all the way up to 1000!  Well done to Ryan who is such a 'number whizz' in only his first year at Merrin School.  

Jubilee

Tomorrow we are celebrating our Jubilee at Merrin School.  The afternoon is going to be a fabulous celebration of 50 years of school life.   We have a number of invited guests here to celebrate the occasion with us and they will be treated to performances from our students,  alongside the planting of a tree and indulging in a piece of celebratory cake.  Each student will  receive a small momento in honour of the occasion.  

Earlier in the week an email went out to parents asking for your patience as we release children slightly later on Friday afternoon.  Of course, if you are in a hurry you are very welcome to come into school and collect your child.

Christchurch Music Festival

I am looking forward to tonight's Christchurch Music Festival performance.   Under the directorship of Angelique Van der Velden, our choir has been working very hard to polish their repertoire.   

A special congratulations to Bethany Mitchell, Katy Mitchell and Joy Su who have made it into the 'special' choirs this year.  This is a wonderful achievement to be selected from so many beautiful voices.  

Bethany also has a position in the Music Festival Orchestra, which again is a very special achievement.

Best wishes to you all for tonight's performance.

School Photographs

Thank you for all of the effort that you went to to make sure the children were looking smart for their school photographs last week.  It was a wet and windy couple of days, but I'm sure that all of the smiles will be bright in the photographs.

Athletics

A special well done to all of our Merrin Stars who competed 'hard' at our Middle/Senior athletics day last Monday.  We have a huge squad of 50+ representing Merrin at the Zones in early November.  Congratulations to you all and a special thank you to the staff who made the day so successful for our competitors.

Staffing

With a staff numbering 55+ there are  going to be changes each year to our staffing.

Recently we completed the  appointment of the following teachers:

Roz Archbold, Susan Perring, Helen Abrahams and Francis Ganderton have been appointed to permanent positions. 

We also welcome Lisa Barr, Sarah Posthuma and Laura Della Bosca to our teaching team for 2017.

Sadly, we will be farewelling three staff members from our permanent team at the end of this year.

Kieran Ford is challenging himself career wise, to work in the fitness industry, Laetitia de Vries is continuing her leadership career at Pegasus Bay School and Annalese Paterson will not be returning from maternity leave.

There is of course, much to say about the contributions that these three wonderful team members have made.  

Kieran has been at Merrin school for 30 years. This can only be described as an amazing length of service! 

Kieran is a kind and warm teacher who has always put children first.  He is an incredible role model for our boys/men and we do so hope we will see him relieving for us, in between work outs!

Laetitia has made a real difference to the programmes and energy at Merrin over the past two years.  She, like Kieran, puts children first and has a deep love of learning.  Thank you for your input Laetitia.

Annalese is a warm and caring teacher who has  a passion for sport.  We also hope to see Annalese again relieving for us next year.

There will be 2-3 more appointments to make before the staffing for 2017 is completed.  

Our school role is projected to number over 500 next year, so you can imagine that in the space of 5 years (when our role was 290+), there have been a lot of appointments made.

As soon as things are finalised and year levels have been assigned to teachers, I will of course let you know.

Enjoy your weekend everyone and I hope to see many of you at the Parent Helper Morning Tea next week.

Kind regards

Lisa