Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. Kia ora, Hello, Talofa, Mālō e lelei, Bula, Hola, Fakaalofa atu, As Salam Alaykom, こんにちは, Hallo, Hoy, હ લ ો, Hē leu, Mauri, न म त, Ola , Chum reap suor, Kumusta, Nihao, Xin chào.

Kia ora koutou

Teachers’ and Principals’ ongoing contract negotiations

Thank you for your support of our strike last week. It is pleasing to see that this week there will be a meeting between the Education Minister Chris Hipkins and the head of the Primary and Secondary teachers' unions to look at how contract negotiations can move forward. This is heartening and I hope that they can work together to come up with a solution that will prevent further industrial action and disruption.

Camp

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Year 5 and 6 Camp at Woodend. It is always great to see our learners experiencing the outdoor education activities available, which includes rock climbing, abseiling, the Flying Fox, campfire and various other outdoor education and team building experiences. There are further photos and recounts of this camp in this newsletter.

Sickness

We are currently experiencing a surge in sickness, with larger than normal numbers of children at home sick. To ensure we don’t spread sickness further, please keep your child at home if they are sick. Also, please talk to your children about washing their hands regularly and covering their faces with their elbow (and not their hand/s) when coughing or sneezing.

Pūtaringamotu Kāhui Ako

Over the course of this year we have been working collaboratively with Wharenui School, Riccarton High School and a large number of early childhood centres as part of the Pūtaringamotu Kāhui Ako (Community of Learning). We are working together on shared achievement challenges which are based around looking for ways to improve our teaching for learners who don’t have English as their first language, processes for supporting the wellbeing being of all of our learners, creating smoother educational pathways between early childhood, primary and secondary education, practices for accelerating achievement, understanding around how to be more culturally responsive in our teaching and generally collaborating together to be better than before.

So far this has included teachers from each of the schools working on teaching as inquiry projects for improvement within these areas, having shared leadership meetings to discuss what is already happening in our learning communities and planning future developments and having shared staff meetings where we have listened to guest speakers and had shared professional development. Our special needs coordinators have also been working together, alongside those from other local schools, on the implementation of the Mana Ake learner wellbeing resource. The early childhood centres have been working together looking at aspects of their own performance and how they can contribute to our achievement challenges. It is still early days with this initiative but we are seeing some benefits already from working together to ensure local learners experience positive learning pathways.

Graduate School of Education Interns

It is my pleasure to welcome our interns from the Graduate School of Education - Brendon Harper in Room 5, Janine Williamson in Room 6, Richard Simpson in Room 13 and Sylvia White in Room 2. They will be working with us until late this term. 

Have a great week and please encourage your children to be respectful, responsible, real learners.

 Ngā mihi nui

Paul Irving

Tumuaki - Principal