From The Principal's Desk

Dear parents and caregivers

Wow, we certainly have been navigating the waves as they have hit our shores. These past few weeks have again been testing times for us all and I am so proud of the way we as a community have all pulled together.

It is wonderful to see the children back at school this week in Alert Level 2. We really enjoy seeing their smiling faces and it has been great to see all the staff back together and to resume life as a school, on site again. I talked with a couple of students this morning and they like being back at school because they can "see their friends" and "it makes me learn better".

Thank you to you, for the way in which you have supported distance learning over the past few weeks. We know it isn't easy especially if you are trying to complete your own work tasks, as well as house work, as well as preparing meals, as well as catering for siblings, as well as organising access to devices, as well as ....

I would also like to thank all of our staff. They have been absolutely fantastic during Alert Level 3 and have made the transition back to Level 2 very smoothly. In fact, in talking to Mrs Mellor yesterday, she said her class were "On fire" because they came back and resumed learning as if nothing had happened. They were able to access their learning slides, they organised themselves and demonstrated the learner agency and independence we are all aiming for.

Thank you to you for a wonderful start to the term yesterday. The children are accessing and leaving school in the appropriate way and you have been great at supporting this by staying off site or coming to the office. As senior leaders we really enjoy catching up with you at the gate and also seeing the children display such resilience by coming in by themselves. We are still available to walk anyone in who would like us to, but there definitely has been less children so far this week wanting us to do this, so again we have seen an increase in resilience and independence.

Resilience has been a big focus for us, it is one of our values. We will never get such an authentic situation to highlight, unpack and demonstrate our value of resilience as this. An example of this has been the fact that the year 4 children have had to book their overnight trip for the third time!

These are some of the questions we will be asking children to consider: What are the feelings that we experience when we have things cancel on us or miss out on things, e.g. birthday parties, when it was no one's actual fault? What do we do? Who do we blame? It is also a great opportunity to talk about things in our circle of control and out of our circle. You may like to talk about this with your family members as well. Another aspect to discuss as a family could be, from which circle do you operate, the circle of fear, the circle of learning, or the circle of growth? Please see thsee the circular diagram that illustrated this, called " Who do I want to be during COVID-19"?

To have feelings of anger or sadness, or disappointment is ok, it is important to name these feelings and then think about how we deal with them, what do we do? If we miss out, what do we do, say, feel and think. What does this look like?

The other consideration (which we are hoping won't occur) is if in the future this happened again, what would I do? What would I be saying, thinking, feeling and doing? How do I cope? What do I need/do to be ready? Moving from one level to another can be tricky and our children will be watching us as adults. These time can be a great chance for you to share how you cope and show resilience. The most important thing is to celebrate the resilience that we all show or are learning to develop, call it out, name it and celebrate it- then we can all be reminded of the good things that are happening as we navigate these times.

I went into the year 4 classes this morning and asked them what they would do if there were no more trips, these were some suggestions: we could wait until next year, we could talk to our friends, we could let it go, we could help each other to be ok. The one I like the best was "we could sleep overnight at school!" A real problem solver right there!

We wanted to let you know that prior to Alert Level 3 we had the kitchen in the hall thoroughly cleaned. We had the cooking appliances professionally cleaned as well as the surfaces.

FOOTSTEPS dance programme will continue this term. There is supervision to ensure that students are not connecting with others. Instructors will keep reminding children to keep what we call their dancing donut (distance from others). We hope that extra-curricular activities will begin in week 9 of this term, for the last two weeks.

You may also notice that the painters have finished for the moment, it is an on-going project. The colours chosen have been selected to be coherent with those in the new build. The blue/green colour that has been used in the new build and the classroom doors and seats is called "navigate". Some of the foyer areas have also been completed with the accent colours and this looks so much better. The colours represent our bush and our sea, the attributes that Mellons Bay is blessed with.

I do hope that everything is fine with you at home. As we work towards the end of this term and year, we look forward to more activities that involve all of our wonderful community.

Ngā mihi nui

ColleenMargison

Principal/Tumuaki

Learning to Navigate our Changing World

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