Kia ora e te whānau o Neirana. It's my pleasure to update you on the busy life of the school this week while Mr Wilson is away working with teachers from other schools in our Kahui Ako (Community of Learning).

It has been fantastic to see so many school activities happening. Our senior volleyball teams have attended and performed well at the recent Tasman Secondary Schools Volleyball Championships with our senior girls teams placing second and third and our boys placing fifth. See the article in this newsletter for more details. 

You may have seen Mr Wilson's recent article about our new school app 'SchoolBridge'. We will build the use of this app throughout the year to include a wide range of functions including returning permission slips and payments, student ID cards and course selections. Senior students have had a taste of using the app this week as they have been selecting their first Puna Ako Elective. This is a five week block of elective modules offered as part of the Puna Ako (wellbeing, engagement, enrichment, study support) programme. Choices include the Road Code, walks for wellbeing, pilates, sports games, community projects and subject tutorial support. Students in years 11 -13 have been asked to input their selection by the end of Monday, and instructions have been emailed to them. Please talk to your young person about their choices.

Of course Covid continues to be at the front of everybody's minds and we are working hard to support students, staff and families through this difficult term. Although we continue to see some students and staff test positive, numbers remain small and we are pleased that transmission within the school community appears so low as to be almost negligible. The majority of infection has come from contacts outside of school. The Ministry of Education guidelines and processes reflect this low risk and students are only deemed to be close contacts if they are household members of a positive case. We therefore encourage all students to attend school unless they are household contacts, positive cases or sick for other reasons. 

While some staff and students are at home we are continuing to operate a hybrid learning system. Work for each class is being placed onto the class Team. If teachers are away sick or working from home, or if students are isolating, they should be able to access class activities to keep their learning going.

Friday 11 March will be an online learning, work from home day for all students. This is designed to give staff and students a break from constant mask wearing, to allow students a day to catch up and work on their learning priorities and for teachers to have a chance to prepare further online resources. The school will be physically closed on this day. 

Later this term students will receive a 'traffic light' report. This is an indicator of how your child has settled into their learning this year and consists of two traffic lights for each subject. One reflects our value 'Respect - Learning Behaviours' and the other 'Ako - Learning Progress'. Attendance and engagement levels contribute to the 'Respect' traffic light. With some students having missed a substantial proportion of the first part of the term this inevitably makes accurate assessment of students' behaviours and progress more challenging. With the usual subject teacher interviews falling victim to 'covid cancellation' I encourage you to make contact with your child's tutor teacher, subject teacher or House Leader if you have questions or concerns about their engagement or progress.

2022 is off to a challenging start. We recognise that these are difficult and unusual times locally, nationally and globally and that the impacts are being felt by you and your families. We are exceptionally proud of our rangatahi, our kaiako and the whole Nayland College school community for the way everyone is wrapping around each other, keeping positive and weathering this storm. Care, communication, awhi and aroha are at the forefront of everything we do. 

Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou.

Hannah Banks