When reflecting on the experiences of our remote teaching and learning to date, one of our Leaders of Learning, Libby Sheehy, posted this message to her Professional Learning Group this morning,

He aha te mea nui o te ao

What is the most important thing in the world?

He tangata, he tangata, he tangata

It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

She couldn’t be more accurate. As physically distant as our Rangi whanau is right now, what I have seen and been a part of is the essence of what makes our school tick – and that is that we believe that our people are the important thing in our world.

From staff quizzes to student lip sync competitions to Whanau and Hui time to small group tutorials to carefully designed and personalised online lessons to Formal Friday Staff Briefings to countless heartfelt messages of support from staff to students and students to students, this Lockdown period has certainly demonstrated that people come first at Rangi and that the aroha is real.

I experienced that again today when I visited an online tutorial with Music teacher Henare Kaa and senior Music student, Maggie Craw. This was a lovely insight into the personalised, encouraging and fun teaching and learning experiences that are occurring at the moment. I know that it is one of many.

We can, perhaps, start to see the light at the end of the tunnel now and a return to physical school seems on the horizon. In the meantime, while we are still learning remotely, please do continue to speak to your daughter about her online work, in particular, how she feels about her workload. It is vital that our young people feel they communicate with their teachers about how their remote learning workload is going. We can and will adjust our expectations. Just be in touch if things feel a bit tough. Afterall,

He aha te mea nui o te ao

What is the most important thing in the world?

He tangata, he tangata, he tangata

It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

Melissa Campbell

Assistant Principal of Teaching and Learning