All the latest news from the SPED team.

Chey Ballard is on the Move!
Chey uses an electric wheelchair full-time to get around the place independently and is one of the best drivers I know! She accesses the RAC pool twice a week and uses walking and standing equipment to help maintain her mobility and strength. Her physiotherapist, Dawn Chalmers, has applied for funding for this amazing recumbent trike from TrikesNZ. Chey can regularly be seen hooning around the back field at sprinting pace. Definitely a thumbs up! 

Outward Bound
Jasper Perry spent a week getting up at 6:15am, going for a 3 km run in the dark, followed by a head under the water swim in the sea, and then a cold shower! This was all part of the Youth Horizons course he attended at Outward Bound in Anakiwa, along with 11 other participants. Jasper reported that the food was “incredible”, and his favourite was the roast chicken dinner.

Jasper’s job, when the group went sailing on the Cutter (a single masted boat with 2 head sheets), was working the lines during tacking maneuvers. The most challenging activity for Jasper was the high ropes; he managed his fear by controlling his breathing. Jasper also made a friend from Whangarei who was easy to talk to and was a big basketball fan.

Jasper says it was a “once in a lifetime” experience that he will always remember; however the life goal Jasper set himself (to eat less junk food!) might not be so easy to remember!   

Tasman Secondary Schools Athletics
Congratulations to the Tasman Secondary School athletes who participated in this regional qualifying event on March 21, following top times and distances in their school athletics events two weeks earlier, James Brown, Bailey del Favero, Aliyah Mounsey, Molly Harvey, Keane Reti, Louis Bowne and Jasper Perry. Mrs Rouse-Groome reported that these students were great ambassadors for the school and the Special Education Department athletics programme.

Live long and prosper!
James constructed a Star Trek Enterprise model as a solution to a science problem he identified in Mr Granich’s science class; James wants to travel in time and this is his solution. The four huge boxes of Lego were gratefully received as a 2022 leavers gift from William and the MacDonald family.