Pānui (News)

Ka nui te mihi mahana kia koutou, (Very warm greetings to you all) This will be my final pānui for the year as I’m getting in a day early ahead of our last day tomorrow as it will be ‘all go!’ Tomorrow marks the end of my third year being your tumuaki (principal) here at Turitea and everyday I still wake up excited to come to work. They say “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life” and that is the feeling currently. Our kura has a beautiful vibe with so many wonderful children...

Kia ora e te whānau, This week I have had the huge, but enjoyable job of reading every child in the school’s End of Year reports. I love the insight into what they have been working on in class and how they are tracking towards achieving their academic goals. Plus reading their student voice made me LOL a few times - certainly one of my favourite parts! I’m real proud of our amazing teaching team, with the time and effort they put into writing these and it also shows me how well they know your tamariki. We aim to have...

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou, (Warmest wishes to you all) Getting this out to you nice and early today because I was supposed to be out at our Cluster Ki o Rahi event, so I had already written the pānui, but unfortunately it has been cancelled due to this weather. You’d think being nearly in December would mean the weather might play ball for you, alas not today… And just like that, we only have 10 school days remaining in the year. I feel like we had just started Term 4 and somehow next week it is December! On...

Tēnā koutou katoa, (Hello everyone)  I’ve really appreciated the kind words you’ve sent in regarding having a voice on placement of your children for next year through the survey that closed on Wednesday morning. It isn’t an easy job with a lot of variables considered in completing this. The infamous quote of ‘You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time’ is ringing true currently. As we work to finalise these lists, I will remind...

Kia ora e te whānau, Apologies for the alarm on Wednesday when you came to pick up your tamariki and there were two fire engines taking up all the parks! We had a fault in our newly-installed manual call point in Tāne Mahuta. Our kids did exactly what they needed to do when the siren sounded and evacuated promptly, which shows our systems work. It created some cool writing opportunities in our classroom too, an unintended bonus. As you can see below, I have had kids from all across the school come and share with me the amazing learning they...

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou (Warm greeting to you all) Huge thank you if you came along to our annual Lamb, Calf and Pet Day last Friday. This is one event that helps us retain our ‘rural school’ status. Also a great showcase of some of our students' commitment outside of school to our uara (value) of kaitiakitanga by looking after their animals. Pictured below are some of my favourite photos from the day. Our winners were celebrated this afternoon and best of luck to those competing in the Oroua Boys & Girls Championship Day with them tomorrow in...

Kia ora e te whānau (Hello everyone) I hope you all had a great long weekend and thanks for your tautoko (support) around our Teacher Only Day on Tuesday as we know this can inconvenience you. Any time our staff get together to engage in professional discourse, there is plenty of rigour around the decisions we make, conversations we have and future planning we do. The day highlighted for me how amazing our staff are and how they are embracing our ‘rapidly-rolled-out’ new curriculum to improve outcomes for ākonga (learners) in 2025 and beyond. A dream team for sure! This week, our...

Kia ora e te whānau (Hello everyone) Yesterday I had another one of those ‘Proud Tumuaki Moments’ as we had the entire team of nearly 40 staff members from Porritt School in Napier come to see how we do at Turitea School. Our whole school gave them a beautiful welcome with a Mihi Whakatau, in which we really ‘raised the bar’ on how we did this. Our tamariki were loud, proud and passionate - it was really noticeable! Our Year 6’s then took each of the manuhiri (visitors) around and showed off our kura. I received beautiful feedback about what...

Tēnā koutou katoa, (Hello everyone) Nau mai hoki mai ki te wāhanga tuawhā (Welcome back to Term 4) The term opened with our usual Mihi Whakatau to welcome our new tamariki who have recently joined us. Mihi atu (thanks) to John (Archie’s Dad) who did an amazing job of being our whaikorero (speaker) for this occasion. Monday was the first day for two new students; Sophie moved to us from Milson School to join Karen and the crew in Kahikatea and Billy (Esmay’s little brother) has started with us in Rimu with Meagan and Hannah. Nau mai, Haere mai (Welcome)...

Tēnā koutou katoa, (Hello everyone) Didn’t Anna do a great job of writing the pānui while I was away in Ōtautahi (Christchurch) last week? I had the most amazing time at my tumuaki conference there, it really filled my bucket! As I’ve mentioned previously, communicating to you all every Friday is one of the best parts of my job. I’ve heard of some principals who outsource their newsletter to save time, but I just couldn’t do that. I hope you can hear my personal voice when you read this and get a strong sense of our school vibe and feel....