By Nick Leith | Posted: Wednesday June 29, 2022
Edging closer to the end of a really successful Term Two that has welcomed back our community into school.
Our students have their first dance party to attend in 2022 tonight. Events such as these are important socially for our students, many of whom have had a very quiet previous two years at school. Whilst the thought of thumping electronic music would give most adults the shudders, it enables really important social skill building and formative experiences around interacting with each other in such environments - all part of the Intermediate experience - even if in a well ventilated and masked-up school hall. Like a masquerade party for the mouth and nose.
We have hosted our local contributing primary schools since our last newsletter. This is the start of the important transitioning process that works so well for our community and enables us to hit the ground running with each yearly intake. It also enables our young leaders to work closely alongside Year 6 students and share the aspects of student life at Casebrook with a captivated audience. An awesome opportunity to be an ambassador for their community and one that will be repeated at the start of next term with our Open days happening. A big thanks to Paul Cook, our Technology team leader, who organised these visits.
Information will be shared with you about student-led conferences in this newsletter. These are slightly different from our whānau interviews at the end of Term 1. They really do benefit from face-to-face interaction and we would love to see parents take that option over video conference. Whilst understandably the video conference may be the only option for some whānau, we really do value having our parents on site and in classrooms with teachers. Please make the effort to come in. We will be closing the school at 2pm on the Wednesday 27th July and Thursday 28th July to enable these conferences to take place but we'll be offering supervision at school for any students that require it due to the early close.
A heartfelt thanks to those of you who attended our special Matariki, culture and kai evening last week. There's nothing more powerful than sharing food together when it comes to forming new relationships and catching up with ongoing ones! A big thanks to Courteney Yardley, Eden Foster and Trina Wilkinson who organised the evening - our students love to perform for their community and this was a wonderful event.
Finally, our esteemed leader and Principal, Sharon Keen, will be back on deck in Term 3. She is free from the shackles of moon boots and mobility scooters so you can look forward to much less wordy Principal articles in our newsletters, next term.
Have a great weekend when it arrives.
Ngā mihi nui
Nick Leith