It's hard to believe this is our last email of the school year. This term has flown by! We are so proud of how our tamariki have coped with being back at school post-COVID. With all of the end-of-term special events and excitement, we're sure you are noticing they are getting tired and ready for a well-deserved break. 🙂

As it is the end of the year it is a time where we are sad to be saying good-bye to some of our staff. 

Staff Leaving

After being employed by Woodstock School for over 23 years, Helen Bryce is looking forward to a well-earned retirement and spending more time with her family. With her wealth of knowledge and experience as a Resource Teacher of Learning and Behaviour, and more recently a Reading Recovery and Learning Support Teacher, Helen will be missed! 

Chris Read, our current Pohutukawa Syndicate Leader is also retiring at the end of this year. Chris is an outstanding classroom practitioner and experienced leader. Chris has also been a champion for Enviro-schools. We will miss Chris' calm demeanour, her caring way with students, her wisdom and her experience, but we wish her all the best in her retirement. 

Another long-serving member of our Woodstock School community, Maree Lewis, is moving on at the end of this year. Maree has been at Woodstock School for 25 years, and the Deputy Principal for 15 years. As SENCO Maree worked tirelessly to support our special needs learners. Maree has been an instrumental part of the Woodstock School Community for so long and she will be dearly missed. We wish Maree all the best. 

In rather exciting news, Anna Connolly is planning to move to Denmark later in 2022 to teach at an International School. While we are very sad to see Anna go, the amazing teacher and person that she is, we wish her all the best in her cool adventures. Don’t worry, we’ll still see her around as Anna is keen to be on our relievers’ list for the beginning of 2022.

Tayla-Jay (TJ) Dearlove is planning to study for a Diploma in Intercultural Studies at Eastwest College in Gordonton in 2022. We are so proud of Tayla-Jay! She has established herself as a very capable teacher and caring teacher. We wish TJ all the best as she follows her dreams. 

Our beloved caretaker Tony Williams departed earlier this term. We thought Tony was stellar at his job, keeping Woodstock looking amazing. We will all miss Tony. In his place we have been lucky to have a temporary caretaker, Bruce Ritchie. We plucked Bruce out of retirement and he has very quickly picked up the many and varied caretaker tasks. While Bruce is looking forward to getting back to retirement, we will be calling on him next year if we ever need a relieving caretaker. 

Finally, one of our part-time teachers Lisa Harvey is finishing at the end of 2021. We've really appreciated Lisa's experience and willingness to help out wherever needed. We wish Lisa all the best in her future endeavours.

Staff Joining the Woodstock Whānau in 2022

We are very excited to be welcoming Cyra Wells to our kura. Cyra will be teaching a year 2 class next year. She is currently teaching at Te Totara Primary School and brings with her a wealth of teaching experience. She is a caring, bubbly, passionate educator who will make a great contribution to our Woodstock School team. 

We are also very excited to be welcoming Jo Brooks as our Assistant Principal. Jo has been Leader of Learning (Assistant Principal) and Hapū Leader at Rototuna Junior High School. She has extensive experience at primary and intermediate levels as teacher and leader. Jo will be a great asset to our team.

We are also delighted that Claire Blomfield has accepted the position of Year 5-6 Syndicate Leader next year. Many of you will know Claire and her amazing array of skills. We are so proud of you Claire for winning this promotion and we know you will do an amazing job.

We have been delighted to offer several other promotions to our existing staff. Sarah Menzies will be our new SENCO, Caitlin Wheeler will be our Literacy/English Curriculum Leader, Tracey Wickham will be our te reo Māori and Aotearoa/Histories Curriculum Team Leader, and Staci Buckman will be our Numeracy/Maths Curriculum Leader. Congratulations team - well deserved!

Finally, we are happy to be welcoming Tui Maniapoto as our permanent, full-time caretaker commencing in January 2022. Tui brings a range of experience from a range of industries, with a passion for landscaping. Tui is really looking forward to working with staff and students around our Enviroschools Initiatives. We will welcome her formally at the start of the year. 

Athletics Days

It was great to see all of our students out, giving it their all on our Senior and Junior Athletics Days. I'm so pleased these events were able to go ahead, thanks to our dedicated staff. 

End of year Awards Assemblies

To minimise large gatherings we are having our Awards Assemblies in Syndicates. If your child received an invitation they will be receiving an award. In order to attend on-site parents/whānau over the age of 12 will need to:

• provide a vaccination certificate or produce your My Vaccine Pass to be scanned by our NZ Pass Verifier (at the gate). Alternatively, for those parents/whānau who are unable to attend, we will livestream the awards

• All visitors will need to wear a mask
• All visitors will need to scan in using the COVID tracer app

The Awards Assembly times on Thursday, December 16th are as follows:

• 9:00 am Rimu & Rata

• 10:00 am Kauri & Rata
• 11:00 am Pohutukawa & Rata

We appreciate your understanding of these restrictions and requirements as we endeavour to provide our tamariki with happy and memorable end of year celebrations. 

Final Day of School - 2022 Classes

As you know our final day of school Friday 17th December. We ask that all students be picked up at 1:30 pm. We have also decided that all students will visit their 2022 classes for a short time on the morning of the 17th December. We feel this will be a great way to meet their new teacher and some other children in their next year's class.  

Reports at Woodstock - Time to Review

As part of our annual review process we would really appreciate your feedback on our current reporting to parents and some ideas we have for next year. Please can you take a minute to fill in this quick survey. Thanks!

Have a great break

So this just about brings us to the end of the 2021 school year. It has been a memorable year for sure. On a personal note I would like to say a heart-felt thank you to the community for your support since I've started at the beginning of Term 3. I'm absolutely loving my role here as Principal of Woodstock School. I'd like to make special mention of the Board of Trustees, who have been a wonderful support and a capable team to work with. The PTA and Whānau Āwhina rōpū have also been active and supportive, as much as is possible in COVID times. I look forward to more opportunities to connect with you all as the traffic light system hopefully moves us towards green. 

I would also like to acknowledge our staff. I could not ask for a better team of people to support our tamariki...each and every one of them is hard-working and 100% committed to making our school the best it can be. 

Finally, thank you to our students. They are all awesome! I love the positive, friendly, inclusive culture we have here at Woodstock. I've had the privilege of reading students' final reports and I am so impressed with the learning they have done. I'm proud of our Woodstock Learners!

I hope you all have a wonderful summer break planned with family and friends. Merry Christmas and we look forward to seeing you next year. 

Ngā mihi,

Paula Wine, Tumuaki/Principal of Woodstock School