As I alight the stairs to the Chapel, my eyes are drawn to the inscription on one of the top steps, Shine Bright, and I am encouraged to do just that.

We had a great start to the year with our Senior Kapa Haka Group who will this year be tutored by highly respected Kapa Haka tutor Sonny!

Summer Sport is now well underway with our weekly after school competitions taking place. One of the biggest events on our Summer calendar is Swimming sports. A huge thank you to Helen, Sharon and their team for all of the organisation and to all of those who helped out on the day.

February and March brings a flurry of inter-house sporting events and along with the excitement, House chants, cheering for peers, a vast array of colourful outfits to support the House colours.

One of the things I love most about being a teacher is talking to the students about their learning. Today I stumbled across a maths class with some students lying on the ground, some standing holding rulers, and some with their eyes staring through a strange device, a clinometer.

This week’s well-being theme is persistence. When considering this Habit of Mind, it’s hard not to look further than our wider community of Canterbury. Whilst some of us weren’t living in Christchurch at the time of the earthquake, we are in awe of the way Cantabrians have persevered through these tough times.

This week's featured local businesses are The Good Oil, Rough & Milne, Texture Plants, Upright Scaffolding and Taylor Shaw. These are all local business who support St Margaret's College and we'd love you to support them back as much as possible, thank you.

We love catching up with our SMC families whether it be our boarding parents on their home turf or at school, our local Christchurch families for drinks, worshipping in the Chapel or learning and being inspired at our Guest Speaker series events.

Welcome to a place where we would like to share useful parenting tips and links to useful articles for negotiating the ever-changing teenage social space.

The Department of Corrections has purchased a property at 14 Bristol St in St Albans for an offenders anti-violence programme and applied for resource consent. SMC will be preparing a submission to address our concerns about the impact of this development on our school community.

The wellbeing of our girls at SMC is of the utmost importance to us all as a community. As you will know many of our SMC international students have not been able to see their families or return to their home country for over a year.

Perfectly timed for the lead-up to the Easter holidays, SMC Rowing has extended its wine fundraiser featuring Eradus Wines and Daniel le Brun bubbles in support of the girls and their all-important Maadi Cup campaign.

Please note the Cafe will be closed Thursday 11 March and Friday 19 March and there are no Junior School lunch orders on these days. Here's what's on next week's menu.