Nau mai, haere mai, talofa lava, malo e lelei, bula vinaka, kia orana, warm greetings
Welcome to Term 4, the final term of what has been a very challenging year for us all. It is a time of year where we are helping prepare our senior students for their final exams and also a time of year where we bid farewell to our Year 13 students as they leave the college to head into the next stage of their lives.
We are very encouraged by the academic progress of our senior students at this stage of the year, we are very focused on supporting our young men to finish these last few weeks full of enthusiasm and energy towards their study. We are on the verge of one of our most outstanding academic performances as a College - if we are able to continue the wonderful attitude we have seen in our students throughout this challenging year.
We were very honoured on Tuesday to receive an acknowledgement of our work in the field of Restorative Practices from the NZ Police. In receiving the District Commanders Commendation “in recognition of the innovative work that St Thomas of Canterbury College pioneered in the use of restorative justice both within the school and the community. The school has changed many lives”.
Staying true to our Catholic faith, forgiveness and reconciliation are two values we hold at the centre of our pastoral care. Often a restorative pathway can be a very difficult process to go through as it requires all participants to deeply express their feelings at a very human level. This aside, it is my experience that when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, the greatest outcomes are possible and we give our young people the greatest opportunity to learn, grow and develop out of adversity.
Below are the links from our special assembly from Superintendent John Price and myself;
We look forward to many farewells and celebrations over the next few weeks. We started this with our sports awards dinner last week. Congratulations to our sports department and all prize winners for the hard work and effort they have contributed to succeed in their given sporting codes.
We look forward to celebrating our annual School Ball this weekend. We look forward to enjoying the company with our parent community and our senior students as the year comes to close. I wish all of our senior students and their parents a wonderful night.
We have our two major events in the next two weeks with our whole school prizegiving on Thursday 5th of November, and our Graduation Mass on Friday 6th November, 10.30am-11.30am. We warmly invite all of our extended community to both events, and remind families that our prizegiving is a compulsory event.