Published by Hokowhitu School

What a fantastic sports day Miss Bisset and the house leaders organised for us today. The children (and adults alike) enjoyed a wide range of games/activities.

Thank you to everyone who supported the Hansen-Wall whanau mufti fundraiser yesterday. Losing your home and so many precious belongings to a fire is a nightmare that none of us would want to endure. It gave us great pleasure to be able to give them over $4,000 in cash and vouchers (as well as some thoughtful gifts). We hope this helps! The generosity shown by so many people has been truly humbling – thank you so much!

Thank you for your support with the visits to Te Rangimarie Marae this week. The children participated with enthusiasm and learnt loads about marae protocol.
Special thanks to those who assisted with the karanga, speaking at the powhiri and supporting groups of tamariki each day.

Talofa lava, o le vaiaso lenei o lai o aoao ma fiafia le gagana samoa

PLEASE remember that school will be closed tomorrow (31st May) for a Teacher Only Day. Staff will be completing professional learning.

We also thank the many of you who remain supportive of us, despite the disruption caused by
on-going industrial actions. Ensuring that we have enough high quality teachers to support our tamariki into the future is incredibly important to us.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank our incredibly talented and hard-working staff. There are very few days in the year that our teachers do not work through their morning tea or lunch break, or get to eat their lunch in peace – mostly they eat while on duty or while supervising the children eating, or while supporting a lunch time activity or club. After school we have both teaching and support staff supporting sports teams with practices, refereeing games or providing sideline support. Teachers have meetings after school most days of the week (working in collaborations means constant discussions and monitoring of child successes and challenges), they make themselves available for parent education sessions/discussion or professional learning (out of regular working hours). Evenings and weekends are often taken up with lesson preparation, resource making, planning, marking, maintaining a personal portfolio of evidence, responding to correspondence, fulfilling specific additional responsibilities etc.