Thank you for your support with letting us have our Teacher Only Day on Tuesday. Not only was it a great day of mātauranga (learning) about local history in our rohe (region) but it was also great to come together as a collective group of primary schools. In Te Ao Māori,(The Māori World), knowledge is seen as a taonga (treasure), so we were extremely grateful with all that was shared with us from the Tai Huki team.
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.
Yesterday, with support from our military parents, we were able to provide our students with a mini Anzac Service. We are extremely grateful to Hunter (Topher and Ben’s Dad) who organised this special experience to educate our tamariki about the significance of April 25th in Aotearoa New Zealand history. As you can see above, Kahikatea did some real life maths learning about how to lay the crosses at the top of our field in the correct format. We appreciate them doing this for our ākonga (students) to learn and pay our respects to remember those we lost.
It is nice to be writing you the pānui for today, after letting Karen and Trish have a turn last week while I was away at a conference up in Te Tai Tokerau (Northland). I wonder if you could tell the difference in ‘writer voice’ when you read it and could tell it wasn’t me? I felt really lucky working with a different rōpu (group) of tumuaki (principals) in a beautiful part of our country that has rich spiritual and historical connections and soaking that all in (as you can see below). I urge you to make it up that...
The pānui is a day early as we have made it to Easter! It’s a bit different this year as with Easter falling early we will come back for another two weeks next Wednesday 3rd April. Yes, Tuesday is a holiday, normally it doesn’t affect us as it falls during the holidays, but this is a throwback to when we had a three term year. A big thank you to the PTA. for starting our Easter celebrations, hosting the Family Easter Event last Saturday. The weather was kind and the photos show how much fun everyone had, it was great...
Hasn’t there been a temperature drop the last few mornings? Luckily the sun has been shining lately giving us some gorgeous days at kura. Hopefully you noticed our new sign on the post out the front of the office? Darian deRidder, a former parent of the school made the original version underneath, so Julie got in touch with him to make a new version to show our name correction from ‘Tiritea to Turitea’. His son Hunter, who works for him, came and personally delivered it and enjoyed having a look around at all the changes since his time here. If...
