The past two weeks have been a flurry of sporting, cultural and academic experiences, with a range of activities and performances that have highlighted the importance of working together to achieve successful outcomes.

 On Monday 13 June we had three netball teams taking part in the second day of the Otago Secondary Schools’ Tournament. All three teams played extremely well, demonstrating good sportsmanship and great performances with the highlight of the tournament being the Year 9 A team taking out the Year 9 title. This is a first for many years and bodes well for the future of netball at Otago Girls’. After club games on Saturday and tournament games all day Sunday and Monday, the OGHS Senior A team showed no signs of fatigue to win their club promotion relegation game and take their place in the Premier B section. Otago Girls’ have not played at this level of competition for some years.

A biennial event on the school calendar is the Dancing With the Staff fundraiser, organised by the Spanish trip students and supported by student dancers and their (sometimes reluctant) teacher dance partners. This year partners were found from within the same House and great entertainment was the name of the game. The outstanding performers and event winners were Mr Chris Richards and his partner Bethany Astwood who danced to the Mary Poppins number “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”. The night was a great demonstration of the wonderful relationships between staff and students at the school. It would be fair to say that the majority of nerves (and injuries) were definitely felt by the teachers, not the students!

Each year the Board of Trustees joins the PTSA in a ‘bubbles and cake’ evening to present the previous year’s annual report. This was held on Wednesday and as always was a great opportunity for two key groups involved with the school to mix, mingle and show their support for the school. The PTSA is currently organising a Nigel Latta event as their next fundraiser. Information about this can be found in this newsletter. I have no doubt this will be an entertaining and informative event and I look forward to seeing many of you there.

Our Edge radio station interns organised a can drive at school this week in support of the Octacan appeal for cans of food for Presbyterian Support. Students were asked to bring along a can of food in exchange for wearing socks and/or scarves of choice. The interns, Millie Cossou and Ariana Namana were delighted with the response and numbers containers full of cans found their way to the Octagon.

As I write this, the ODT Extra spelling Quiz is taking place in the school hall and nine OGHS teams are taking part.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, all of these activities have required staff and students to work together to ensure success. Collaboration is an increasingly important requirement for modern workplaces as well as for happy and successful lives. In order to collaborate, students need to learn how to communicate clearly, how to follow instructions, when to take the lead, when to follow, how to encourage and motivate others, how to do their bit and when to let others do theirs. In short, collaboration requires good social skills. Social skills come much more readily to some students than others and at school the routines, rules and expectations that we have are designed not only to ensure order, but also to help the girls learn the behaviours that will prepare them for their futures. Teachers and parents are important role models in this regard and the following link is a great one to remind us all how to support our young people 

http://ilovetowatchyouplay.com/2016/06/10/kids-tell-us-the-truth-about-sports-parents/