Kia ora and warm greetings from Waiporoporo house.

With a new year comes some changes to Waiporoporo house with Mr Lewis moving into a within school leadership role, we now have two Deans. Lukas Davidson will be looking after the Waiporoporo senior students and Sig Koop will be looking after the juniors. Both Mr Davidson and Ms Koop have been involved in Waiporoporo house for a few years now and are excited to lead the house in 2021.

There have been some exciting things happening in Term One. Notably, two of our students competed in the Coast to Coast race last month. We would like to congratulate Ivo Baguiney and Josh Mclean from our house who did our school proud. This is a great reminder that there are plenty of out of class pursuits available to our students and we would like to really encourage Waiporoporo learners to be giving things a go, you never know where it may take you.

We would also like to congratulate our house leaders for 2021. We were overwhelmed with applications and it was great to see so many students putting their hands up to get involved. Our house leaders for 2021 are Azkiya Mohammed, Ivo Baguingey, Milly Mussett, Riley Inglis, Cooper Atherton and Watene-Cannes Huriwai. These leaders have already been showing great enthusiasm in the role, and we thank them for all the mahi they have done so far.

Besides setting our school expectations around uniform, attendance and classroom conduct, we have been focusing on the ‘growth mindset’ in our Ako classes this year. This principle is primarily about believing that our talents can be developed through hard work, good strategies, and input from others (in other words we aren’t just born with them). Our kaiārahi have done a fantastic job of delivering this content, and it has been great going around the classes and seeing our learners engaged and responding to the content.

Finally, due to Covid restrictions, we had to delay our first house event of the year, but the show must go on. So on April 1st (it's no joke), the Tabloid sports will take place. This will be a fun event where students from across year levels can get together and compete against the other houses in the several team challenges. Mr Davidson and Ms Koop, both being competitive types, are hopeful Waiporoporo can raise the bar this year and become a force to be reckoned with!

Best regards,

Lukas Davidson - Waiporoporo Senior House Dean

Sig Koop - Waiporoporo Junior House Dean

lda@linwoodcollege.school.nz

koo@linwoodcollege.school.nz