Principal's Page

Kia Ora Friends and Ni Hao

We had a wonderful Chinese New Year celebration last Friday, and it was so cool to see our Chinese families, and many others too, dressed up in red and yellow an in traditional Chinese dress.

Our first Whānau Time of the year was special - as it always is. One highlight was a very cool video made by rooms 15 and 28, celebrating Chinese culture and Chinese New Year. See below.

Whenever we have a special event, such as Chinese New Year, or a special language week, such as Cook Island Language Week, we fly the appropriate flag. There were a lot of proud children, parents and grandparents watching as we proudly raised the Chinese flag on our flagpole last Friday.

Sport Helps With Academic Learning:

I have devoted a page to this topic in this newsletter, and I hope you can find the time to read it. In a nutshell, a new study from the University of Sydney finds links between children's long-term participation in sports and increased academic performance, including impacts on National Testing scores, absenteeism and likelihood to attend university.

To me, it is further evidence of the importance of a balanced and holistic approach to learning. When we over-focus on academic scores, homework and high-pressure, high-stakes approaches, we often end up achieving the exact opposite of what we had hoped.

I was guilty of encouraging (pushing) my two first children into reading and writing before they started school. I know that in the long term, I did them damage mentally and emotionally and contributed to my daughter never ever feeling like a success - even when winning national awards as an adult.

I took a more holistic approach with my youngest son, and he has been highly successful but keeps everything in balance. Sport definitely helped him with that.

In 2018, I was invited to meet with the South Korean Ministry of Education. They talked to me about their concern with where their total focus on academic achievement had taken their children - and their society. They were second in the world for academic achievement, and second to bottom in the world for student happiness and wellbeing.

They have addressed this with a relationship-focused approach - exactly as we have at Western Heights - and they feel they are on a much better pathway for their children and their society.

Our Children Are Awesome:

Last Friday, I was packing up after Whānau Time when a young man named Arav came to see me. This is pretty close to what he said to me - "Mr Maindonald, can I talk to you for a minute, please? I just want to tell you you don’t need to spend all this money on our school. It’s very kind, but you don’t need to do it, and I want to tell you, even don’t do it. I love this school exactly the way it is. It’s already perfect, I think. I just wanted to tell you this."

Pretty awesome, I think; it shows what great hearts our children have and what a great school our staff have built.

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.

My very best regards to you all,

Ash Maindonald

Principal.