Month: May 2024

There aren’t many more memorable days than a Cross-Country day in a rural school setting I reckon. I myself attended a small rural school called Harrisville, south of Auckland, which was very similar to Turitea in a lot of ways and we had to run through cow paddocks filled with mud and cow pats for our event too. I remember my teacher, Mr. Short, told us that this was ‘great character building’ so it would make him very happy that roughly 30 years later, we are still giving our tamariki the same experience. I understand that running isn’t everyone’s jam,...

I have to start the pānui with sending a huge mihi (thanks) to James (Dad to Joseph in Mataī) from Dwyer Tech for helping us fix our front fence. Our insurance claim only just got accepted yesterday and they have managed to fit us in right away - Ka Rawe! (Awesome!) I personally can’t wait to have this fixed, as I don’t like our front entrance looking like it is. If there is a ‘silver lining’ to this incident though, it has given us some leverage to potentially fast track the Interim Speed Management Plan around schools, in which we...

Yesterday across the motu (country) we celebrated Kaiāwhina Tautoko (Support Staff Day) where we recognised the amazing mahi (job) that our team do here to awhi (care for) our tamariki. NZEI (Teachers Union) even put together a Spotify playlist with inspirational songs to acknowledge their mahi.

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou (Warmest greetings to you all)  The ‘talk of the town’ today has been the events in the early hours this morning where we were left with a severely damaged school sign and front fence as pictured above. Unfortunately, a car wasn’t driving to the conditions and ploughed right through it. Luckily no one was harmed and our fence and sign will be able to be fixed, but hopefully it sends another message to Waka Kotahi (NZ Transport Agency) that the speed limit through this area drastically needs to be reduced. You might recall last...

Nau mai hoki mai ki te kaupeka tuarua! (Welcome back to Term 2!) As always, we start each term with a mihi whakatau to embrace any new whānau to our kura. I was really proud of our tamariki for just stepping straight into that mode as they set up our paepae (seats) and got into their positions ready to roll. We hope those involved were able to see that we ‘live and breathe’ our uara (values) of Whanaungatanga (Community) and Manaakitanga (Kindness and Hospitality) in doing this important ceremony in Te Ao Māori.