Nau mai haere mai, talofa lava, malo e lelei

Term 3 seems to be hurtling by with only three weeks to go after this one!

Please take note of upcoming dates as you are warmly welcome and encouraged to join us for these community celebrations:

Saturday 17 September        College Ball at Airforce Museum

Thursday 22 September       Variety Concert at school

Friday 21 October                    Sports Dinner at Hornby Club

Tuesday 1 November              Prizegiving at Airforce Museum

Last week we welcomed our new Leader of Learning Science, Mr Andrew Jones, who comes from being leader of e-learning at Avonside Girls' High School.  Mr John Gaffaney is relinquishing his leadership duties of the faculty after many years of service but continuing as a teacher.  We extend thanks to John for leading this faculty with distinction for many years and wish Andrew all the best for his career at St Thomas'.

This week we have football, league and basketball teams away at Winter Tournament and look forward to hearing about their progress.

Congratulations to our senior theatresports team which won their quarter-final round against St Bede's in the local secondary schools' competition to go into the semi-finals.  We wish them success through into the finals!

Power Up is in full swing every Monday night from 5.00pm to 7.00pm.  This provides a whole family approach to supporting achievement for Pasifika families on the west of Christchurch.  The place is abuzz with smiling faces, parents honing up their computer skills, senior secondary students receiving NCEA tutoring and younger students working on literacy and numeracy skills.

On Friday we host the principals and identity leaders of the five Edmund Rice schools to the annual meeting held this year at our place. It is very interesting hearing about innovative practice and social justice initiatives from our brother schools as we all share the same charism and founding values of the Brothers. 

We thank and farewell Ms Damaris Kingdon from her role as New Zealand Edmund Rice Network Coordinator at the end of this year. Damaris has generously committed a lot of time to supporting our schools and coordinating ER activities so we will miss her from the school scene. We wish her all the best for her new adventures as this will be her last schools' meeting.

Congratulations to Alex and William McCorkindale for appearing before the Parliamentary Inter Party Hearing into Homelessness this week in Christchurch and making a submission on this topic.  That is fantastic 21st century learning in practice and reflects our school values brilliantly. Well done!

You will all have seen the huge gap in the centre of the school with the administration and C block demolition complete. This space is about to be sprayed with grass seed until a new learning block begins construction, hopefully in January next year.

Busy times which is great as it keep us all out of trouble!!

Warm regards

Christine O'Neill

Principal