Principal's Page
Welcome back to our final term for 2022.
Nine weeks left in our year is not a lot of time to do all that needs to be done, but our staff are brilliant, and they'll make sure we get to the finish line successfully, positively and in style.
I was away for all of the last week of term three, am away for all but Monday of this week, and away for a week starting halfway through week two of this term. I feel really bad about being away for so much time, but it is one of those 'perfect storm' situations where a whole lot of things have come all at once.
On a positive note, for the last week of last term, I was a Keynote speaker at an education conference in the Cook Islands. I presented on "Shifting the Paradigm - Achieving a Thriving People and a Thriving Planet, through a focus on Hope and Appreciative Inquiry, within a Bush Classroom Context."
My Keynote was very well received, and the Secretary of Education and several local principals were moved by it. I was very pleased with the message I was able to deliver, the way it was received, and the connections Dr Rae Si’ilata - Education Consulting / Senior Lecturer Te WhareWānanga o Awanuiārangi - made to my research and results.
Huge thanks to our Bush Classroom teacher Nicole Nicholson for all the material I was able to share from her research and programme in action.
I will also be sharing this same research and outcomes with a group of highly regarded principals as well as national facilitators from all over New Zealand later this week.
Covid-19 had a lot of impacts in a lot of ways on all of us. I am hopeful - always the optimist - that the worst of it is behind us. Hope - tūmanako - is a beautiful and oh-so-important thing. We definitely have great hope for a better, brighter, healthier, and happier term four, and even more so for 2023.
As always - if you have questions or concerns about anything school-related - email me at macash@mac.com, and I will get back to you asap.
Take care all -
tofa soifua
noho ora mai
Ash Maindonald
Principal.
