MAORI

It was a crazy year for Kaupapa Maori and everyone at St Thomas of Canterbury College with all the trials and tribulations and interruptions to our 2020 cohort. We continued to support each other and when we were back at school the students were keen to get involved. We continued to have amazing support from our whanau Maori and to support the learning opportunities we are able to provide that enhance the experiences that our tama have. We have hosted and celebrated on many occasions where possible from a haka powhiri for our Police Commissioner after receiving our distinction award and other guests to our school. The students have shown resilience and many of them have strengthened our collective mana by exemplifying that manawa spirit that we always speak of and try to portray in their performance and work in the community.

We continued on our successful ways at the Last Ki-o-rahi tournament by a few of our players being named in the tournament team. We look forward to our next tournament at the end of November. We took one of our biggest groups of year 9 students to Rapaki Marae for our annual year 9 trip. This was very well received by both staff and students and a wonderful opportunity to share our culture and our history. The junior cultural festival students rallied together and again showed a great level of effort to continue to shine on the stage at the festival and also at our prizegiving aided by the strength of older year 9 & 10 student leaders. We were very proud of our boys and their effort and their commitment to practice and represent us with pride.

We have only been able to do all of this because of the boys and their parents and the wonderful whanau that we have here at St Thomas and the support they give us. We thank you for all the hours you put in and we look forward to another successful year in 2021.

Keri Campbell