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Western Heights School
Our Vision We are … Caring, Creative, Confident, Cognisant, Connecting, Contributing, Collaborative. Our Mission Our children love to learn to lead as they dream, grow, shine and reflect. Love - ourselves - others - our world Learn about - ourselves - others - our world Lead - ourselves - others - in our world |
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Calendar of Events
Whanau Time is every second Friday in our hall, starting at 9:45 am sharp. Everyone is warmly welcomed to join us for these special WHS family occasions. Next Whanau Time - Friday 10 June. Rooms 25 and 28 hosting.
WHS Calendar
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Friday 10/6
Rooms 15 and 18 visit Corban’s Art Centre.
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Monday 20/6
Rooms 22 and 26 visit Corban’s Art Centre.
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Thursday 24/6
Rooms 24 and 25 visit Corban’s Art Centre.
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Tuesday 28/6
Winter Sports Field Day - Senior School.
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Join Us Tomorrow at Whanau Time
Our next full school assembly aka Whanau Time is tomorrow - rooms 25 and 28 will be hosting. There is a lot to pack into this one. There will be a special performance by our Glee Club. This is a new innovation this year at WHS. It’s a new opportunity for children to express themselves through dance, song, but particularly all aspects of drama. We wish them well in their first performance. There will also be a special farewell for our previous Board Chair Trudi Brocas. Trudi has given ten years of outstanding service and leadership to our Board. Western Heights has been very well led and is very well prepared to go forward, thanks to her wisdom, common sense, professionalism, knowledge, experience, and focus on what is best for our children. Whanau Time will need to start bang on time at 9:45, so be early to get a seat. |
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Board of Trustee Election Results
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We are very appreciative of our parent community at Western Heights. Your support for your children, our teachers and your school is awesome. Having seven candidates for our Board of Trustees is a really positive sign that parents in our community value their school and want to contribute to its future direction and governance. Another positive sign was the voter response. We received 138 voting papers in total, a positive increase on the number and per-centage who voted in our last contested election, six years ago. All candidates have been informed of the results. Our congratulations to Mark Sullivan, Sarah Layton, Nicola Yelash, Malcolm Purdon and Ray Renner who were all duly elected. They will choose their Board Chairperson at their next Board meeting in week eight of this term. Special congratulations to Nicola and Malcolm who are new members to our WHS Board. Our sincere thanks and commiserations to Melissa Norman and Jerome Buckleigh who were unsuccessful candidates. |
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“The Purpose of Education”
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Over the rest of this term, I will share a few different perspectives on this important topic. Recently a large gathering of primary and secondary school principals from all over New Zealand met with the Minister of Education, Hekia Parata, and the internationally renowned educational researcher and scholar, Professor Andy Hargreaves, formerly of Great Britain and now at Boston College, Massachusetts. Professor Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. The mission of the Chair is to promote social justice and connect theory and practice in education.The focus of this gathering was to launch a debate on “The Purpose of Education” in New Zealand. Some wonderful thinking, discussion and idea sharing resulted, and I would like to share the best bits with you as I think this is an important topic for us to reflect on as parents, as teachers and educational leaders, and as a learning community focussed on doing the best we possibly can to educate, guide, prepare and support our children to become lifelong learners. |
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“The Purpose of Education” - our WHS Perspective
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I was asked to reflect on the question, “if there was only one thing Western Heights could achieve for its children by the time they leave here, what would it be?There are so many answers that come to mind - giving children a sense of self worth, teaching them empathy, guiding them to become independent leaders of their own learning, helping them to be resilient and persistent… and many more.In the end I settled for embedding in them a love of learning that reaches down to the cellular level. A love of learning means that you will want to and love to learn about - first yourself; second others; third your world. Life-long learning about yourself will help you understand the importance of believing in yourself, having courage, confidence, resilience and persistence (among many other qualities). Life-long learning about others will help you become empathetic (as you will learn not to judge others without first understanding them), cooperative, collaborative, and a team player (among many other qualities). Life-long learning about your world will help you to be a caring, concerned and connected citizen. It will lead you to care more for your world as you understand and value the beauty, wonder and finiteness of its resources. Learners who Love to Learn, Learn to Lead: Our WHS school Mission is “Love to Learn to Lead.” If we can find ways to hook children into learning, and grow in them an ever deepening passion for learning, so many of the challenges they (and our society) will face, will be overcomable. Passion is an oft overused word, but I can assure you that I am passionate about achieving this goal, as are our staff. As our Minister, Hekia Parata, stated, “Anyone not passionate about causing learning to happen should get out of the education business. I don’t want miserable people around our children, or around you,” she said. |
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Western Heights at Zone Chess Championships
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We took a large team to the West Zone Chess Champs, held at Summerland last week. Mr Merritt has been training many of our children at lunch times, and a few young enthusiasts also joined to gain some valuable experience. Our competitors were Gunn Jung, Manat van Eindhoven Plas, Andrew Chen, Ryan Le, Lucas Guo, Haitian Wang, Charlie Reihana, Jakub Lolo, Lucas Mckinney, Kevin D, Kingston Sexton, Jared Aylott, Lucas Wech, Kevin Fang, Ryan Zou, Maia Masters, Sophie Hall, Ella Williams, Nikita Cortland, Andrey Woodside, and Dontayne Sexton. Our children had to play against the clock - for their first time - and with full competition rules. This meant if they touched one of their pieces, they had to move that piece, for example. Our A Team finished third behind AGC Sunderland A and Summerland A. Andre and Gunn won games with the prestigious “Sneaky Knight” move, and were awarded special badges for doing so. Our children learned lots, were excellent ambassadors, and had fun. My second favourite story of the day was from one very young competitor who I heard tell her friend, “I can’t believe I won a game and I’m still not sure what the Bishop does.” The best though was this, “I won a game because I killed his King with two of my Prawns." |
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Awesome Art from Room 10
Big rubber truck tyres have become a very popular playground feature at Western Heights. We have two different areas where these tyres are a feature, and they are busy every lunch and playtime. Room 10 have painted circular inserts for the tyres so children can walk - and bounce - on them. A lot of thought went into their art works, which they proudly shared at last week’s Whanau Time. |
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Kayden is not from room 10, but I had to slip his art in too. |
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Safety Reminders - Drop Off Zone and Near WHS
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An important reminder for us all - especially now when the weather and the roads are often wet. Please remember the 40kph restrictions that are in force before and after school. We also need our parents to take extra care in our Drop-Collect zone. # Please get out of your car and accompany your child across the Drop-Collect zone if you are parked on the far side. # Please do the same if you are parked on Sturges Road. # Please set a good example and use the pedestrian crossing - even if that means you have to walk a little further. We have had some very close calls with vehicles coming round the corner and suddenly finding children crossing the road right in front of them. With a wet surface, stopping distances increase and a death could easily result. # Please do not double park in the Drop-Collect zone and then leave your car. # If you can, wait for your children near the top of the Drop-Collect zone to allow more vehicles to file in behind - which allows traffic on Sturges Road to flow too. # Please look all around you carefully before pulling out in our Drop-Collect zone or when parking. We had a small crash yesterday for example. # As always, your support and understanding in this matter is greatly appreciated. Below is a really good pedestrian and child safety guide - it would be great to go over its points with your children. Often children assume they are safe if they are on a crossing, but approximately 10% of all road injuries happen on pedestrian crossings. |
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Welcome to our Western Heights Whanau
The warmest of warm Western Heights welcomes to... Judah Buckleigh-Dickson, Nikau King-Cleave, Cruz Elliot and Deborah Bekomson. We are delighted to have you join our Western Heights whanau and hope and trust you all feel right at home here, are happy, and Loving, Learning and Leading.
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Western Heights School126 Sturges Road Henderson Auckland 0612 P - 09 8361213 M - 021 779 009
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