Dear Parent, Caregiver and Children,

This week we have brought back a focus that I believe is an 'oldy but a goody', "please" and "thank you". This gentle but important reminder simply reinforces the idea of manners and how far having good manners will take you, a wonderful lesson that our children can take with them and hold onto for life. Being thankful and having gratitude is important and hopefully it enables us to sit back and reflect on what we do have, the fortunes we are able to enjoy each day. Within our school we are lucky to not have to think too hard with what we can be thankful for, whether it be our families and community, culture, learning resources, quality teachers, the list is not short.

Recently, I was walking a principal colleague from Tauranga around our school and she was kind enough to put pen to paper a couple of days later, this is a section from her email title 'An amazing experience':

Thank you for so warmly welcoming Sophie, Estelle and me when we visited your wonderful school on Monday. I was so impressed, enjoyed it immensely and I revelled in the amazing wairua!

Added to our message of manners is again reminding ourselves to be comfortable with confusion and the mistakes we make along the way. Mistakes are an essential element to the learning process, we all make them and continue to do so as we learn and grow as people. Understanding and applying the learning is the important part and here at school it is very much our Kaupapa. Below is a blog entry I read from Seth Godin that sums it up quite well.

"It’s essential that we make new mistakes. We don’t make nearly enough of them. Not enough original effort, not enough generous intent, not enough daring in search of something better.

But at the same time, we need to stop making the old mistakes again and again. What did you expect to happen when you did the very same thing that didn’t work last time? For some of us, it’s more frightening to do something new than it is to retry something that failed".

Finally, our Spring Fair Committee have been busy over the past weeks organising and setting up what should be an outstanding day for all. We are always in need of extra support and have a meeting at Lone Star this coming Monday 7.30pm. If you are able to come along and join us that would be great. Many hands make light work. 

Warm Regards

Geoff