| | | | Click on the Calendar icon for our Live Community Calendar | |
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| | Calendar of Events - through to end of Term 4: | |
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| | Western Heights School Will Be CLOSED - Monday November 12
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| | | | Please Note: Western Heights School will be closed on Monday November 12. There will be NO school that day. There will be NO before or After School Care that day. | | | |
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| | Message From Our Board of Trustees to Parents:
The NZEI has advised the Western Heights School Board of Trustees that the principal and teachers at our school will be taking strike action all day on 12 November 2018.
The Board has carefully considered the availability of teaching staff on the 12th and have agreed that we cannot provide the normal teaching services during the strike. Therefore, the decision has been made to close the school during the strike.
We appreciate, as parents ourselves, that this is an inconvenience for both parents and students. But please be assured that student safety is our main concern. With this, it is important that you now make alternative arrangements for the care of your child/children on the day of the strike. The school will NOT be providing child minding services on the day of the strike.
As a Board, we support our wonderful teachers as they seek to achieve work conditions and a pay structure that will help us to keep good teachers in the profession, and in Auckland where living and accommodation costs are particularly high.
Thank you for your understanding.
Please contact the Principal if you have any queries relating to this decision. | |
| | Jump-Jam North Island Champs
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| | | | Our girls were awesome. They competed in the Open Advanced section - the toughest section there is - and they shone. Actually shone is perhaps not entirely the right word as they were plastered with fake mud as part of their costume. The thought, planning, preparation and ingenuity that went into the costumes was awesome. Big thanks to Rebekah King for her work on the make-up - and mud. In the end, St Mary’s school from Tauranga were deserved winners - a big squad and very polished. Our girls did outstandingly well to come third, as the level of competition was simply stunning. | | | |
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| | Our girls and their coach Jenna Aalbers put hours of work and preparation into this challenge. At the end of their performance they were asked by the show’s MC what was the best part of being involved in JumpJam? The answer was telling, “getting to spend time with the awesome Ms Aalbers.” That says it all really. The relationship and the respect involved is why these girls did so well. Huge thanks to all the teachers who came down to support - we made ourselves heard in the auditorium. Huge thanks to the parents for their awesome support too. Altogether we had a support crew of over 50 adults in attendance. A total team effort.
Please Note: We were not allowed to take photos or videos inside the auditorium, but there will be official photos available online soon. I will share these when we have them.
PS: Just quietly, although St Mary’s were brilliant, nothing we saw matched the National Title winning performance of our “Thriller” team from two years ago. That was a performance for the ages as they say. | |
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| | EPRO8 Technology Challenge:
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| | | | Last week Mr Merritt took four teams of four to the event location of Summerland Primary for the Annual EPRO8 Engineering Challenge. http://www.vectorepro8challenge.co.nz/
All of our teams tried very hard and though they did not all manage a top three placing, they had fun, showed perseverance and learned a lot during the event. At the end, all our competitors reflected saying things like, "If I did that again I would..." or "I wish I had done this earlier.” From our teams, Alpha team (Amin Soleyman, Vlad Jones, Dexter King, Jaxin Halloran) came second equal and earner the opportunity to go to the next event in about a month's time.
Nic Yelash gave the following feedback to Jo Merritt: Thanks for taking the teams yesterday - it was a great experience for them all. Very challenging, certainly exhausting, but a great exercise in teamwork, problem-solving and communication - absolutely worth it. Our students all rose to the challenge admirably and should feel very proud of themselves - and the semi-final place was a bonus!
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| | Board of Trustees Slides Update | |
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| | Twice a term our Board of Trustees meet to make decisions, review policies and procedures, receive reports and feedback on school operations, programmes and progress. Our current focus is on Strategic Planning for 2019 and beyond. More on that soon. One feature of our Board meetings is that different areas of our school share slides of their classrooms in action. We are sharing these with you also.
Please Note: Next year is Election Year for Boards of Trustees. Start thinking now about whether you would be interested in standing for election. | |
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| | Enviro Garden Project Thanks: | |
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| | | | The Western Heights Enviro garden team would like to say a big THANK YOU to Dave and Josh for helping us with our new picket fence. Doesn’t it look great! We are planning on extending the pickets all the way around the garden in the near future. We wouldn’t have been able to do this without Dave and Josh kindly donating their time, knowledge and skills. Thanks again Dave and Josh. | | | |
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| | Christmas Calendar Fundraiser | |
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| | | | This is our major fundraiser for the year. The great thing is these calendars make awesome gifts for Christmas or the holidays. They are useful - they tell you what day it is for example. You can make notes on them to remind you of stuff, and they feature your child and / or their art work. They make a great and affordable gift for grandparents and extended family. At only $10, they are a real bargain. We can make as many copies as you require, just get your orders in in by November 16, as our this is a big job for our volunteer helpers.
Calendar art work will be available to view via Seesaw as of 9 November, to assist in your decision as to how many calendars to order. Calendars feature your child, or your child’s art work - maybe even both. | | | |
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| | Calendars are available with either one separate page for each month, or a whole year on one page calendar. Please fill in a separate order form for each of your children. Order forms sent home this week. Cash or eftpos payments can be made at the School Office. Alternatively we encourage payments to be made directly to our School bank account which is 12 3039 0773733 00. Please make sure you put your child’s name, room number and reference to what the payment is for e.g. calendars. Please ensure you return your order form to the office so we know what calendars you require. Thanks so much for your support. | |
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| | | | A Parents’ Guide to the Role of the Board of Trustees NZSTA has developed "A parents’ guide to the role of the board of trustees", to provide information and advice for parents and caregivers on what they can expect from the board of trustees.
For more information and to download the guide, go to NZSTA's Information for parents page. https://goo.gl/YiTGwg | | | |
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| | | | School Photo Orders: These close 0n 9 November 2018. Envelopes have all gone home. Payment can be made online to School Memories www.schoolmemories.co.nz or by cash or cheque to our Office. Please Note: Payments can NOT be made via Eftpos for this. Sorry. | | | |
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| | | Lyla Dodd (room 13) is in the All Star Mystix cheerleading team. They have a garage sale fundraiser coming up on 17 November 2018 It's being held at Summerland primary so is local and will help with raising funds for future travel to Australia and Hawaii. | | | |
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| | Tour Diary Snippets and Stories | |
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| | | | Over the next few weeks - probably until the end of the year to be honest - I’ll share a few Diary highlights (I hope they are highlights and not boring-lights) from my Woolf Fisher Fellowship World Tour. We covered 14 countries in 14 weeks, so there is plenty to share, but I will do my best to just keep to the (moderately) interesting bits. | | | |
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| | Vietnam - Part One: On our first day in Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon, we did a Cycle Tour of the city. You sit out front in a buggy seat while a guy pedals you from behind - well behind. I did feel guilty but paid him well. I think it was a good thing I was so friendly because he drove me into six lane, four entry roundabouts with a thousand vehicles going in all directions and me on a buggy out in front to get hit first if anything gets mistimed. It was beyond belief and explanation. Anyway, we navigated many such intersections and streets - often to the accompaniment of a cacophony of horns.
Highlights included the shrine to the monk who set fire to himself in the 60’s in protest of the way the Capitalist-Catholic government of South Vietnam mistreated the Buddhists. It was graphic and confronting - big posters and detailed explanations, including a photo of his heart which was the only thing not to burn and is now in a special government museum. It brought to mind similar stories about Joan of Arc. Who knows, but I do wonder…
That night we did another tour with the same Saigon Adventure company. We had a beer at a rooftop bar - with the most stunning views of Saigon and of Tony Stark Tower (from the Avengers movie). From there it was several courses at a variety of stops - one of the stages was a hair-raising ride through a maze of alleyways and back yards. Some of the alleys were literally a centimetre wider than our motorbike on each side, yet our guides rode through with aplomb.
One of the street food stalls was outside a ground floor apartment. These apartments were in blocks four stories high. Each housed two small bedrooms, a small living room, and a toilet. No kitchen inside allowed. The rent at ground level is $3000 US a month. For floors two to four it is $3500 NZ a month. The difference is on the ground floor you can run a small business - so you pay a premium for that.
Taxis were so easy to hail and a 15 minute ride cost two or three dollars. The rules re mobiles and driving are a lot more relaxed here. We saw countless guys on motorbikes driving and talking on their phone, even texting and riding. The best example of taking it to the max though was a taxi driver who was mobile gaming when we hopped inside his taxi. He took our directions and drove us there without once interrupting his phone game. Quite surreal!
Our Intrepid Tour began on day three and the first day was day trip to the Mekong Delta. We visited a fish farm, coconut farm, a Banana and Rice Wine farm and had meals and sweets with locals. Transport was bus, barge, canoe and Tuk-Tuk. It was a memorable day.
I have made an absolute point of going to the restaurant people, the family members, the service people - whoever - personally, privately, take their hand in both mine (the Vietnamese way) and thank then specifically and sincerely. Their appreciation in return has always been very clear. Tips always come after the sincere thanks, but taking time to be sincerely thankful and appreciative is really important I believe.
More next week.
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| | This was a little hard for me to share - as a life-long Canterbury supporter - but really Auckland did so well, have waited a long time for this success and did a great thing in making entry free for everyone. | | | |
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| | | The Clarke family play a big role in our school with two boys, Jireh and Zion attending, mum working here, and dad Eroni supporting us in all we do.
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| | Below is mum Siala Clarke's report from the game on Saturday… Just wanted to share my “Proud Momma Moment” 😊 Huge congratulations to the Auckland Team who took out the Mitre 10 Cup on Saturday, after a hard fought game. Awesome game! Coming from 20-7 down at half time, into extra time and then clinching it at 40-33 on the final whistle! Well done to Canterbury who played a great game too! 😃 My highlight was seeing our boy (Caleb Clarke) cross over for a try in his first Provincial final 😍 | |
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| | Let’s Hack Learning and Life: | |
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| | As part of our ongoing initiative to move towards Zero Waste, we no longer send home printed newsletters. This way of keeping you in touch with our school is mobile friendly and enviro-friendly. | |
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| | | Should you not want to receive our newsletter via email, please click the Unsubscribe link above. | | | |
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| | | | | Thank you for reading our newsletter. Thank you for supporting our awesome school and wonderful teachers. | | | |
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