It’s Time to Return to School:

Our aim has been to be patient and understanding and supportive of our parents. We understood some families would be a bit concerned under Level Two that it was safe to return. This is why we put no pressure at all on families for the first two weeks of level Two.

Hopefully by now all families can see we have really good health and safety measures in place at Western Heights. Our parents are being really helpful, patient and supportive and ensuring absolute minimal contact with  other children. It really is once again safe for all our children to return to school.

Getting back to a normal routine is important for the health and wellbeing of your children, and being around their friends and teachers will help them feel in control and reassured. We are really looking forward to welcoming the remaining 170 children  back to our school and making it a positive experience for them and for you.

Regularly attending school really matters when it comes to your child’s learning and their future. We are here to help and we are very willing to talk about any challenges you have in ensuring your child returns to school as of Tuesday 2 June.

As of next week all schools are being held accountable to ensure all children who are healthy and well return to school. Of course, if they are unwell, they cannot attend. Please let us know if that is the case.

With the expectation that all children will be returning to school, there will no longer be on-line learning support available.

Again, if you have any concerns around this expectation, or being able to achieve it, please get in touch with me as soon as possible - via email at macash@mac.com or via text on 021779009 or make an appointment to meet with me. As always, we are here to help and support in any way we can.

Our Dance Stage is back in full swing. We have a real oldie - Ooby Dooby by Credence Clearwater Revival - that we play as our Back to Class song. Some of our boys really get down with it - which is very cool!

So back to the research. At the heart of teaching and learning sits a discomforting truth: Gaining expertise is difficult. But this truth has an upside. Adding some difficulty actually promotes learning. More struggle creates more understanding - within reason. If the struggle is too great we (and our brain) are likely to give up. Hence the ‘Goldilocks’ principle of it needing to be ‘just right’. The Downhill challenge pit in the diagram above is an example of the other end of the scale - no real struggle at all.

The value of struggle is at the center of the educational process. Students need difficulty, but, building struggle into the curriculum isn’t always easy, especially when learning goes online. 

Certainly, kids don’t want learning to be hard. But for teachers and schools, it’s important to reframe learning, teaching and showing that the difficulty of gaining expertise is what makes the experience a valuable one. Or as a math professor said: Math isn’t always fun. But that’s what makes it worth doing.

Footnote: I loved maths when it was a challenge that I felt was within my reach if I worked at it. However, I hated those aspects of High School math that felt utterly beyond me. To this day I absolutely love working out maths problems and computations in my head but when my son brings me problems involving Logarithms and Antiderivatives, my brain holds up a stop sign and says this is one pit you are not jumping into. I guess I need a ‘Goldilocks’ introduction to these topics and a very patient tutor...

Teacher Jennece Morris has been on maternity leave for a while now - and we miss her a lot. This week she sent through this family photo with her partner Keneti and baby Tyson - a beautiful family!