From the Tumuaki | Principal 2023 Term 3 Week 5
Kia ora koutou
What an exciting time for our basketball teams! We have three finals on Friday night in Christchurch (see details in separate article and on Facebook). Every student, coach and supporter deserves our highest praise no matter which team wins, but I also want to acknowledge the incredible impact of teacher Andy Lee, whose passion for coaching basketball has seen a huge growth in participation and success here in the last two years.
With Covid 19 losing its special status, Jill Hill (our nurse and student administrator) and I want to thank you all for your support and cooperation over the last three years. It hasn’t been easy for any of us but we’ve worked well together. It’s also a good time to remember that Covid is still a dangerous illness with some people suffering long term effects; many people’s immunity has suffered and we are dealing with lots of other illnesses as well as Covid. Please do continue to keep students home when they are sick to save our staff getting sick which constantly causes disruption to learning.
We’ve gratefully welcomed several new relief teachers recently:
Stephen McKelvey
Matthew Lawrence
David Cooper
Their presence has slightly eased the pressures on our system and it’s been great that two have come to us through being shoulder tapped by people in the school community.
We pride ourselves on manaakitanga - including caring welcomes - but relief teachers seem to cop some unnecessary flak from many students. Please talk at home about always showing our best welcome and giving everyone a great experience of Darfield High School so that they want to come back!
Shave for a Cure is coming up. I'm becoming attached to my fledgling mullet 
but I'm up for The Shave...
We’re half way through Term 3!
Ngā mihi maioha (warm regards)
Andy England
Key dates: