Tēnā koutou katoa, Kia orana, As-salamu alaykum, Konnichiwa, Noa'ia, Mauri, Ni Sa Bula Vinaka, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Tālofa, Mālō e lelei, Mālō nī, Tālofa lava, Nǐ Hǎo - warm greetings!

This week is Freedom Week and I commend everyone who dressed up or participated in some way for Cultural Day on Monday. Thanks to the School Council for their excellent International Pot Luck Party where we enjoyed food and entertainment from around the world. This looks to become an annual event on our school calendar. There will be another opportunity to perform cultural items at the Former Refugee Cluster Cultural evening on Tuesday 30th August at the women-only event we are running for the second year. Come along and support this event as there will be music and dancing and food! This is a great way to celebrate the many cultures in our school.

At assembly this week I spoke about purring cats! For cats, purring is a way of communicating. It is important to note that cats purr to communicate with other cats as well as with humans. Cat purrs convey messages to both people and other cats. Just like the cat, communicating across cultures and beyond our own group is vitally important when thinking about cultural understanding. If we are not able to communicate effectively with others, it can be a Cat-astrophe!

In line with our PURR theme of the term, please reinforce the expectations around phones, uniform, reading and respect at home.

P is for phones. How can we use our phones to make connections with other cultures? How can we share positive messages with cultures other than our own. What harm can be done to cultural understanding if we exclude, bully or abuse people online or in person because they are not like us?

U is for Uniform. Uniform bonds us together across cultures, saying : ‘You Belong in my Group’ - which is Otago Girls’ High School. Wearing your uniform well says we are all part of something together. You Belong Here. You are part of Us. Te Kotahitanga - We are all one.

R is for Reading. Reading transforms our understanding of cultures other than our own because it allows us to see inside others’ experiences. When I was teaching English in London in the UK, I taught the novel - Sumitra’s Story by Rukshana Smith, about the experiences of an East Indian family, displaced from its home in Uganda and resettled in London, where the eldest daughter Sumitra is torn between two cultures. This helped me to understand the challenges faced by the students I was teaching there, arriving as refugees and adjusting to a life very different from their past one in a large city. It also helped me understand the challenges of our refugees and immigrants arriving here. It is important to read all the books we can to get inside the experiences of others. Films and documentaries can also show us the world and not just life in our town.

The final R is for Respect. We must treat others as we would like to be treated. We must reach out to others beyond our friends and our group. We must look for ways to include others. We must smile and say hi. We must find out about Life Beyond Us!

I will finish with a quote from Maya Angelou:

People will forget what you said,

People will forget what you did,

But people will never forget how you made them feel.