From the tumuaki | principal 2023 Term 3 Week 9

Tēnā koutou e te whānau

This is Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori and a group of students have been doing some great promotion. It’s exciting to me to see some recovery in the native language of New Zealand, a language that was smashed by government decision-makers including the education sector (teachers punished kids for speaking Māori, schools rated it as “non-academic” and more) in the early stages of the 20th century. Māori is unique to NZ so if it doesn’t have a home here, it doesn’t have a home anywhere. Learning more than one language is proven to be very good for our brains and language provides insight into culture - in this case, a culture that is rich with wisdom about people and our land. I look forward to a future here where Māori and non-Māori thrive in full valuing of each others’ cultures and languages.

Today’s Blue Friday and a day out of uniform for us to raise awareness and funds for fighting prostate cancer. Many of us men will experience this at some stage and treatment is often successful if identified early.

This week, we have had some rumours about measles in school. We have fully investigated these with Canterbury DHB and we’re confident to say that there have been no measles cases at DHS (or in Canterbury currently). It is useful to be vigilant though and to check on vaccination - rates have been lowering since Covid but vaccination has been a proven tool in almost eliminating measles.

I’ve said before how proud I am of our student leaders and they impressed me again this week with assemblies and the mana they hold in our school. Speeches for our Board of Trustees elections were impressive and it was great to recognise the many members of our Student Council who reliably provide strong student voice to contribute to school decisions. 

Please look out for the Board’s consultation survey article in this newsletter.

It was lovely for me to see some of our skiers at Porters this week - some still making progress in their first season, others acrobatically ‘owning the mountain’. We have such a rich range of talent and opportunities here. Thanks to the staff who have worked hard to make this happen and the parents who’ve driven others each week.

Today is a long day for Amanda Wright, our International Director, and me, as we head to China tonight on a two week Rewi Alley-themed relationship-building visit with other principals from Malvern. We’re excited to represent our school and to experience China. Next week, in my absence, deputy principal Nicola Turner will be acting principal and I have great confidence in our team.

I’ve really enjoyed our school this term and I believe we have made reasonable progress on catching up from the disruption in term 2. We have plenty to work on but (A) we acknowledge that and (B) we have a good team to tackle it.

Best wishes to our Koru Games teams next week.

Ngā manaakitanga (with respect/care)

Andy England

Key dates:

See https://darfield.school.nz/calendar/

Week 10 Koru Games (years 7&8)

22 Sept Last day of term 3

9 Oct First day of term 4

1 Nov Senior Prize Giving 7 pm Darfield Rec Centre

3 Nov Last day for seniors, Gumboot Friday

16 Nov Staff Only Day (secondary schools only)

20 Nov Malvern Kāhui Ako Staff Only Day (primary schools closed)