It may have been chilly this week, but 2024 is really heating up this term with some excitement and wonderful opportunities over the first two weeks.

Kia ora e te whānau

We had our highly anticipated PJ Day on Wednesday which was a huge success again. It also helped that it was such a cold day, everyone loved the chance to hang out in their pj’s, oodies and slippers. A massive thank you for your support with this! One of our student council members, Kai, made this videoto support the day and we would like to share this with you. It’s a little late for advertising, but I think the Student Council did a great job putting this together - they certainly enjoyed themselves! 

We’ve had two evening events this week. We had our T@TT Open Night on Monday where we welcomed families from TRS to come along and learn more about what it means to be a senior student at MPS. It was wonderful to see families come along and bring their child/ren along. We listened to Anita and Jeremy share what learning looks like and also the many opportunities for leadership and development the children are given.  One of the best parts of the night was welcoming back some of our past senior students who did an amazing job of sharing just how special their time at MPS was, and the strong positive impact it had for preparing them for secondary schools. One student mentioned that because of the Y8 IB PYP Exhibition, he felt much further ahead of other students at his new school because he knew how to independently go about tackling curriculum project expectations.

Performing Arts Shines this Term 

Our second evening was the amazing Soirée which is now in its third year. Andrea Thelning did another fabulous job of putting the event together and it was an amazing experience to see all of the performing arts talent that we have in the school. We saw performances from the choirs, hip hop dancers, bands, cellists, trumpters, recorders, ukulele and keyboards. We are very lucky to be able to provide highly talented itinerant teachers that support our ākonga with their performing arts. We are looking forward to Aupaki Rocks, BandQuest and the Aupaki Cultural Festival later this term. It certainly is a heavy term for the Arts - especially with our TTO performance next week and Art Exhibition towards the end. 

Our very own Olympian 

For some people, being in the Olympics is just a childhood backyard game every four years, or a unit of learning at school, or a hope and dream. But for one of our talented parents, it is a reality and outstanding achievement. Congratulations to Moira Koster (de Villiers), one of our parents, who competed at the Olympic Games last night in the Judo section. We were all sitting on the edge of our seats watching her, it looked like a very hard match which went into extra time. It amazes me the level of fitness, skill and stamina a person must need to be performing at that level.  We all hope she could feel all of the support coming from our community last night - we think she did an amazing job and is an excellent role model for the MPS community and students. We’re all very proud of you Moira!

Here is an article from The Press for those of you wondering who our very own olympian is!

Staffing Updates

We would like to welcome Sharlene Powney as our fulltime New Entrant teacher in Toitoi. We were lucky to have Sharlene join us in Basecamp last term for a couple of days each week, so she has already been able to jump in ‘boots and all’ with our 7 new students. It has been a lovely start for this new wee class.

With Sharlene leaving Basecamp, Jane Scotland is now going to go full time back into this space until the end of this school year in order to maintain a consistent and high standard of teaching in the very crucial foundation years. Jane is very excited to be dedicating all of her time to her class. Clare Byers and Melanie Borgman will be supporting her SENCO role and Lisa Dowell will be released further to support her DP role until the end of the year.

Kia pai tō rā whakatā! (Have a great weekend!)

Donna