Hero photograph
 
Photo by Jordan Jefferis

Principal's Panui

Jordan Jefferis —

by Rachel Skelton

Kia ora and welcome back to Term Two.

What an interesting time we have had over the last few weeks. It is wonderful to have our learners now back in the building.

I would like to take some time to congratulate all of our learners, teachers and whanau on the very different roles they have had to play over the lock down period.

To our whanau. It has been far from an easy time for you with many having to juggle the demands of full time work with caring for children at home. At times this would have been fairly trying. I know in our household having the dining table converted into a semi permanent workspace had it’s challenges especially at tea time! We also extend our aroha to those families who may have had a loss of income over this time. Please do not hesitate to come and speak to us about any hardship concerns.

To our staff a huge thank you for the extra time and effort put into ensuring that classes continued the best that they could over the lock down period. Also thank you for going the extra mile to check on the well-being of learners and each other.

Finally to our learners, I commend your resilience in the face of very trying times. Whilst we do do a lot of learning online, moving completely online is a very different way of learning. By and large most learners have coped extremely well. Some would say they preferred the ability to self pace through learning tasks, others that they missed the face to face contact of their peers and teachers. From here it will be interesting to see how we might use some of the positive learnings from this time in our approach to education moving forward. For those learners who are concerned about how the departure from learning onsite might affect NCEA achievement moving forward rest assured that we are looking at a number of ways to adapt learning programs and to catch up on the marking and moderation processes for work completed while off site.

Hope you all had an enjoyable, safe and happy Queen’s Birthday weekend.

Mrs Skelton