I trust this finds you and your whānau well.

Continuing our focus on Everyone matters, today we held a mufti day for students and staff to raise awareness and funds to support our Student Volunteer Organisation (SVO group) as well as those facing incredibly challenging times in Ukraine.

The next BLE value we will focus on is Strive to Succeed. Students this week in collaboration with their Mana Tāne Kaiako have been setting goals for the year. I encourage you to discuss these with your son over the coming weeks.

A special congratulations to Jack Tyro who has been selected in the New Zealand Surfing team to compete at the ISA Junior World Championships in El Salvador in May. This is an outstanding achievement, we look forward to following his progress over the coming months.

Well done also to our rowing contingent who competed at the South Island Secondary Schools regatta this past weekend, with all boys putting forward their best which resulted in the team being awarded 6 Golds, 2 Silver and a Bronze medal.

Again I will draw your attention to some excellent context based learning happening as part of our curriculum redesign. Over the last two weeks, 9T’s Religious Education class was tasked with creating the Temple of Solomon using Minecraft. Many students went above and beyond what was expected of them, with some including depictions of Jesus’ life, his visits to the Temple, and even a recreation of the village of Bethlehem. Here  and at the end of the article are a number of their designs.

This week our Lenten focus was almsgiving. The mufti day today was a way for us, as a community, committing to this together. Almsgiving includes one of the corporal works of mercy - feeding the hungry. As the Lenten period continues I encourage the boys to donate to the St Vincent de Paul food drive remembering the words of Pope Francis in his Lenten message -, “Let us not grow tired of doing good in active charity towards our neighbour”

Until next week, ngā mihi nui

Jon McDowall

Acting Rector