Whānau Time Message:
Each fortnight we come together as a school to enjoy time together as a school family, celebrate learning and build and celebrate the special culture that makes us who we are.
Our overarching theme for this year has been to revisit, review, refine and celebrate the individual components that comprise our school culture, philosophy and way of learning, growing and being.
We have been focusing on one aspect per fortnight, every Monday Morning as a staff, and every second Friday as a full school at Whānau Time.
The Sequence We Are Following Is:
Our Vision - Ā Tātou Tamariki, Ō Tātou Whenua, Ka Ora Te Apōpō
- Our Children, Our Land, For Our Future
Our Mission - Love to Learn to Lead
which we expand to - We Love to Learn,
So We Can Learn to Lead,
So We Can Lead With Love
Our Whakatauki - Toitū te Marae a Tane-Mahuta
Toitū te Marae a Tangaroa
Toitū te Tangata
Flowing through these is the message of HOPE
We focused on three meanings for HOPE that connect to the elements above:
HOPE - Help One Person Everyday
- Help Our Planet Everyday
- Help Our Pacific Everyday
Simon Sinek came up with the idea of the Golden Circle. He teaches that we often get it wrong by starting with what we do - the WHAT. Instead, we should always start with WHY, HOW, and then WHAT. Indigenous peoples teach us that we actually start with WHO, then follow Simon's model of Why, How and What.
Our Vision is all about our children, our land and our future.
So the WHO we start with is the people (our children) and the land. Papatuanuku is the name we give to the land beneath us - it's a way of saying 'Mother Earth'. We need to treat and care for the earth the way we would our own dear mother.
Our WHY is we Love to Learn to Lead. We Love to Learn so we can Learn to Lead so we can Lead with Love.
Our HOW is achieved through having HOPE. We have three ways to explain HOW to apply HOPE. One is by Help One Person Everyday.
Two is by Help Our Planet Everyday.
Three is by Help Our Pacific Everyday.
We take the Pacific to mean all water and waterways - including our local twin streams - Henderson and Opanuku.
We explain this a little better through our Whakatauki - our treasured saying.
If the land and sea are well, the people will thrive.
Our WHAT are the things we do to put HOPE into action.
For HOPE - Help Our Pacific Ocean - we have four WHAT actions.
Do a Chore - like keep rubbish out of stormwater drains - or a beach clean up.
Say NO to plastic - paper bags and paper straws are a good start.
Teach others about the importance of keeping rubbish, plastic, and dog poohs, too, out of our waterways.
The final way is to just be nice - care about our water ways.
This is a pretty cool video from Napier City Council.
We finished with our traditional video from Nature Speaks - this time, it was Harrison Ford is The Ocean.