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Photo by Chris Smith

Engagement continues to impress

Chris Smith —

Recently in the Senior Hub I was lucky enough to dust off the teaching shoes. To be honest, it would have been a stretch to call it teaching however, I did get to witness first hand a great group of learners fully engaged.

The Project (previously known as the Friday project) still offers such an array of activities and delivers a raft of opportunities for our tamariki. In the area I was operating out of pupils were involved in the following; coding using 'scratch', designing 3D Chess Pieces on Tinkercad, building electronic circuits that developed into Boats and Transistor Radios, Design and Art. The thing that I witnessed the most was the general hum of children working co-operatively on tasks that had grabbed their attention and curiosity. 

On Monday I was invited along with other Principals and Lead Teachers of the Hills Cluster to drop into some of our employers in Dunedin to look at how they operate and to discuss the trends of what they are looking for as employers. We visited 4 sites: Scott Technology, Natural History New Zealand, Innov8HQ and Runaway Play. This was an enjoyable and in a way reassuring day out and about. Key messages that I took away from the day included; employers want people who can work with others, are curious and willing to learn. Also that children need to learn in diverse ways and encounter many different experiences along their educational journey. It is an exciting and small world that our children will enter into as adults and we need to do everything in our power to make them successful and contributing citizens.

At last nights Board Meeting, the Trustees adopted the enrolment zone imposed upon the school from our Ministry. The zone will take effect on December 11 2018. We are currently working through the documentation around rules and regulations and we will keep you updated via the website. I know that this will cause some anxiety for those that are considering Wakari but may fall out of the allocated area, for these people please do make contact about enrolment as normal and we will work from there. 

Congratulations to Mrs Bonney and Mrs Gribben and all of the 172 performers at the Polyfest last week, you were great. Also thanks to those parents and whanau that helped to make the afternoon a success.

Thanks to all of our community for the calm manner in the way you have handled yourselves and your children with the spate of inappropriate approaches to children in our area. Please do remain vigilant and sensible as investigations continue. 

As always if I can be of any assistance let me know.

Regards Chris