From The Principal's Desk

Dear Parents

Our first term has certainly flown by and it is great to have seen all the learning that has taken place. Our focus has been on building relationships, facing challenges and keeping ourselves safe. There have been many situations and contexts in which we have been able to achieve this.

Our children have had many experiences outside the classroom, at camp and overnight activities and we would like to thank you for your support with these, as well as with transport. So many life skills are learnt leading up to and during these activities. It is great to hear your feedback and I know in many situations (e.g. camp) the parents enjoy (and learn) as much as the children.

We recently had a practise lockdown. The school works with Harrison Tew, who specialise in emergency planning. Julia and Wade run this company, they are ex Police Officers and Julia herself is an ex pupil of Mellons Bay.  This lockdown was conducted at the end of morning break, to create a situation where teacher supervision is less and the children need to rely on their own knowledge of what to do.  The objective of a lockdown is to minise vision, sound and movement until we are given the all clear of any threat.
In this case the children were required to go into the nearest building, lay down on their tummies and be quiet until released. Julia was "blown away " by our children and "super impressed". 

This term we conducted a mini poll to see what time you prefer to attend school meetings. As you can see the 2pm time is the most popular. The original poll for the focus groups also indicated this by a margin of 22 to 17.

We are wanting to ensure that all communication is received by everyone, thus we have been emailing all notifications and updates. We are endeavouring to be "paper less" in line with being environmentally aware, efficient and up with current electronic practices.

We would also like to thank you for your support of KINDO, we have received very positive feedback from parents and we are pleased to announce that everyone apart from 23 students, is on KINDO!

The focus groups were a wonderful opportunity to meet and dicsuss our vision, reporting, digital technologies and support of studnets with behaviour needs. There were some coomon themes that came through:

• Tradition is important but we need to move/modern with the future
• The world is evolving we can't ignore it.
• Foundations are important, digital technologies are a tool to help learning.
• Our 4Cs are valued and need to be commented on with personalised comments
• Parents want to know how to support their child's learning in all aspects of school life/ at home.

Attached below is our strategic direction for the school. Our 4Cs are those that we want our children to leave our school with and therefore these make up our goals for the year. We will be able to articulate our vision when we have sought student voice on this as well.

Mellons Bay School - Stretegic Directions 2018 - 2021

The end of this term sees us saying farewell to a few people. Constable Merv Hotter has worked in our school assisting with Keeping Ourselves safe this term, plus road patrol training as well as cyber safety. He has moved to Pukekohe and will be joining the Pokeno motorway police. On his last day he stated he enjoys coming to our school as our children are polite, enthusiastic and eager to learn.

We also say farewell to Mrs Pam Speight who is moving to Nelson. We thank Pam for all that she has done for our children in her own classes as well as our Kapa Haka. We would like to ask if there is anyone in our community that has connections or knows of a person who would be keen to take our Kapa Haka.

Mr Zac Guttenburg is leaving at the end of this term and we wish him well in his future. We are pleased to let you know that Mrs Annaliese Stephens will be teaching in Room 1. Mrs Trici Rowe will be teaching in TWT with Miss Doherty. We welcome Mrs Sarah Rowley to our staff as our New Entrant teacher in Room 7.

Currently there is a real shortage of teachers, particularly in Auckland. Finding teachers has not been easy for these full time teaching roles. No doubt you have read about this in the media. Relievers are also in short supply. Currently there are 40% less students enrolled in teacher training and this is something that needs to be addressed for the future. We are pleased with the wonderful quality of teachers that we currently have and have hired. We will always endeavour to put the best teachers we can find in front of your children.

Congratulations to our cricket team – they made it to the interschool final, by achieving 6 wins and 1 draw. We played Cockle Bay in our final, to come second. Thanks to Mr Harder for his organisation of the team, he said the boys made a good all round team effort. Thanks to the parents who supported through the season and helped with transport.
We wish you all a safe and happy break and look forward to a great term of learning in Term 2.

Ngā mihi nui

Colleen Margison

Principal

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