Greetings from the Principal’s Desk

While I write this, I’m sure that you all will also understand that we are also entering the term knowing that we will need to adapt to students and staff becoming unwell. Thank you for supporting us as we attempt again to create a circuit breaker for our current surge of positive cases. We wish all those who are unwell a quick recovery. Look after yourselves and touch base with your year level dean or one of our pastoral team should you need any additional support. 

The term began with our Year 9 Friendship Camp and the Cultural Camp at Tuurangawaewae for Year 11 students. We will host the annual Auckland Diocesan sporting and cultural exchange on Monday. Both schools are part of the Anglican Schools' network and occupy a special place in their respective diocese. We are certainly more similar than we are different. On the sports field, and in the art and cultural challenges,  I’m sure there will be fierce competition and on the sidelines proud school spirit and enthusiastic support from parents and students of both schools.

No doubt as a family you will be finding yourselves caught up in the relentless winter routine of transporting your children to their various sporting venues and arts and cultural activities, or reassuring and encouraging them as they work on assignments with deadlines looming.

Added to this, students will spend a large part of the term preparing for House Singing, which of course is a much-anticipated event at the end of the term.

This year, House Singing on Friday 1 July 2022  will be held onsite in our All Saints Chapel, so it will look a little different to the years when we go off-site.

We normally have to sign the contract when going off-site late the year prior, and the team at Claudelands were gratuitous to let us push back this decision date until March this year. In term 1, the House Singing team regularly got together over Zoom to work out plans A through to G with all the different levels and information available from the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, the government and our school Covid Response Team. In term 1, we were not even meeting as a school, not singing indoors, and we had no idea how things would look in term 2 which is our biggest term of normal winter sickness, without the added complications of COVID-19. Any future event was unpredictable. With all the uncertainty it was deemed not wise from a financial or well-being perspective to continue with the event at Claudelands in 2022. The team at Claudelands completely understands the intricacies behind the scenes of this event and we have a date pencilled in for 2023.

With the event now on-site at Dio, we have the flexibility to move with any government changes to COVID-19 guidelines, and to adapt based on our current COVID-19 situation here at school.

So what will it look like?

There will still be a rehearsal period leading up to the event starting in week 6, and the Houses will have their own choice song and a hymn to arrange, rehearse, and perform.

All the Houses will sing the same hymn, which is known to most students, unaccompanied but arranged in any style they choose. Houses will be able to have accompanists for their second song. There will be adjudicators who will be marking all the singing for House points and awards -  including the mighty Whitehorn Cup for the winner of House Singing.

Due to space limitations, “Ins and Outs” cannot happen. But,  knowing how much these are anticipated, the Year 13 students will still be able to do a dance segment in place of this. The dance will not be judged.

We hope that everyone gets behind and supports the student House Leaders and their team of student helpers who do everything musical for this event - selecting music, arranging music, teaching them music, accompanying, choreographing, rehearsing, conducting and more.

House Singing will take place during the school day of Friday 1 July, with some rehearsals happening in the morning before we live stream the event to our community. Due to venue space limitations, we cannot invite our community to attend in person but we encourage everyone to watch the free live stream. To add to the House spirit of the day, this will be a non-uniform day and we encourage students and staff to dress in their House colours.

We know that many students, staff, whaanau and Old Girls will be disappointed not to have the evening event, but we hope that by taking the best bits of this longstanding special character event, we can celebrate the joy of singing together.

Wishing each and everyone a happy and healthy term 2

Mary Curran

Principal