Culturally responsive event: Hangi

At the Community Hangi on this term we were able to unveil the new sign for our school with the gifted name that we have been given by the Ngāi Tūāhuriri Education Committee. Tihiraki, meaning Northern peak / summit has been gifted to our kura after a number of years of consideration. We would like to acknowledge and thank the Ngāi Tūāhuriri Education Committee for the gift of this name. I would also like to thank Dianne Robinson from Mātauraka Mahaanui who took our original request back in early 2016 to the Education Committee.

The Ngāi Tūāhuriri Education Committee felt that this was relevant to our setting given the importance of Maukatere (Mr Grey). Mountains are great as a visual metaphor for learning - the idea of scaling the lofty mountain for success, or for the idea of collaboration (you can’t climb Mt Everest on your own). We felt was perfect for our kura. We are certainly delighted with this name as we believe it is a great fit for some of the programmes we are already running and the high expectations we have of our tamariki.

This is the start of a very exciting journey for our kura as we look to continue the development of our cultural narrative. Our gifted name will help to drive this process. We are all excited about being able to continue this work around developing our cultural narrative and will look forward to sharing more information about this work with our whānau in future newsletters.

Finally, a big thank you to Craig Collings who has created this sign for us and to Anthony Gilsenan for gifting the macrocarpa we have used for the sign.

Keep an eye out as we hope to have the new sign out the front of the school soon.