Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

Welcome to week nine of the third term or to put it more into perspective week 31 of the school year; these two weeks will be very busy with a number of activities coming up.

Wednesday night is the annual ‘Haddon Shield’ public speaking competition with Outram School, the senior classes have been working very hard on their speeches and having heard a number of them already I can say that they are of a very high standard.

Summer sports must have started because I watched T Ball at 9 o’clock in a jersey and by 12.30 the cricket team that I coach's game had been called off due to rain!

Over the next term our school will be taking part in regular: T Ball, Futsal and Touch competitions. To ensure that all of our pupils get the most from these competitions a code of conduct will be given to all participants.

Remember the reason children play sport is to have fun, but as a school we expect all pupils who represent our school to behave in such a way that all of those involved: coaches, parents, officials and other players enjoy their sport. I feel sticking to the simple expectations in the code of conduct will ensure this.

As mentioned earlier we are getting well through the school year and already we have a huge number of enrollments for next year.

It is really important that we know of all possible enrollments as soon as possible to enable us to best manage the classes for next year.

So please if you know of any potential enrollments tell them to ring the school and fill in an enrollments form so that we have a more comprehensive picture of the number of pupils that we will have for 2012.

I have been amazed at how the Rugby World Cup has captured the imagination of our nation—I never thought that I would attend a rugby game in Dunedin between England and Romania that would almost be a sellout.

So over the next weeks I will sign off in one of the languages of the teams still taking part. This week it is an Irish farewell, from my family’s home province of Munster:

“Slan agus beanncht leat”.

Have a great week,

Mike Brosnahan

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

I spent my weekend well seventeen hours of it anyway, doing the class based component of my Level One cricket coaching qualification.

Like all learning aspects of it took me out of my comfort zone, but equally like all learning it was inherently beneficial. One of the key factors that come up was a discussion about why children play sport. Many people had strong views on the subject (for this purpose all children who attend school are defined as children). Research shows that the reason that most children play sport is to have fun, fun maybe having a laugh or it maybe

enjoying the success/winning. But the next reason differ dramatically from boys to girls: The next strong reasons for a girls wanting to play sport are all based on the social aspects e.g. team spirit to be in a team, team work. For boys the reason that they play is to be good at something, to learn and improve skills and to be fit. While these reasons may differ from child to child the overall picture is that girls focus on their involvement with the team and on skills secondly, while boys focus on skills and competition.

The implications for us as parents, teachers and coaches are obvious. If we want our child to continue to play sport the focus needs to be that, for girls we develop the team and social aspects of the game. For boys they need to be well coached on the technical aspects of the game and to feel that they are improving and can win.

It is important to give our children as much encouragement and support as we can to ensure that they stay involved in positive ex-school activities. Not all people can or even aspire to playing at an elite level but participation in physical activity is a vital component of a healthy lifestyle and the attitude our children learn when you follow them through their life.

Have a great week,

Mike Brosnahan

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

As you hear repeatedly on the radio, television or read in the paper, only ten days to go until the beginning of the Rugby World Cup. While it is a sporting event it also presents a unique opportunity to learn more about the diverse countries and cultures that will be taking part. As a school wide topic we have chosen this theme to encourage pupils to find out more about cultures other than our own and to develop an understanding of how huge and diverse our world is.

Last week I was privileged to watch our pupils perform in the ‘Stars on Stage’, the standard of their performance was exceptional and they looked to be really enjoying themselves. A huge thank you to Miss Cooper and all of the other people who helped in any way.

Tonight our Choir is performing in the biennial Catholic Schools Music Festival. They also have been practicing very hard and I know that Mrs Dillon has been putting in a huge effort with this group of pupils.

Thank you for all of your donations for our mufti day today. Hopefully this will make a real difference to the people struggling in our community. Remember the old saying ‘charity begins at home’.

Have a great week,

Mike Brosnahan

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

As you hear repeatedly on the radio, television or read in the paper, only ten days to go until the beginning of the Rugby World Cup. While it is a sporting event it also presents a unique opportunity to learn more about the diverse countries and cultures that will be taking part. As a school wide topic we have chosen this theme to encourage pupils to find out more about cultures other than our own and to develop an understanding of how huge and diverse our world is.

Last week I was privileged to watch our pupils perform in the ‘Stars on Stage’, the standard of their performance was exceptional and they looked to be really enjoying themselves. A huge thank you to Miss Cooper and all of the other people who helped in any way.

Tonight our Choir is performing in the biennial Catholic Schools Music Festival. They also have been practicing very hard and I know that Mrs Dillon has been putting in a huge effort with this group of pupils.

Thank you for all of your donations for our mufti day today. Hopefully this will make a real difference to the people struggling in our community. Remember the old saying ‘charity begins at home’.

Have a great week,

Mike Brosnahan

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

Welcome back to week four and what a special week this week promises to be with St Mary’s making it’s first appearance on ‘Stars on Stage” since 2003. I have had a sneak preview of our school performance and it is stunning.

I wish to thank here all of the people who have been involved in making it happen, especially Miss Victoria Cooper for the hours of work and effort above and beyond that she has put in, also for the energy and enthusiasm that she has brought to our item. It is easy to see that all of the participants are having fun and that is what makes it such a success.

I would also like to congratulate the pupils from our school who have achieved representative honours for this year. The demands on young people to achieve in sport has increased exponentially over the last decade. In the ‘old days’ I played for the Otago Primary Rugby team and we had one game a season, I think that I would have played a total of about eight or nine games in a year. Consider how many games children play now days, and they often play a number of sports.

I am a great advocate for sport but I think we need to ensure a balance or we will finish up with pupils of late primary school or early secondary age ‘burning out’ from too much competitive sport. How much is too much? That is the 30 billion dollar question? But I think one aspect of the answer is in the first part of my writing, enjoyment. If the child is enjoying the sport it isn’t too much, if they are asking not to attend a game or a practice then maybe it is.

Have a great week,

Mike Brosnahan

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

Winter has hit with a vengeance and many of us have seen more snow over the past couple of days then we have for a long time. Because I live up in the hills when the weather looks like getting snowy, we try to leave a car parked at the bottom of the road on which we live because often our road and our drive became impassable.

This morning our family took a 15 minute walk to get our car before heading off. This was a small challenge though compared to Alaska where children are expected to play outside until the temperature reaches minus 12degrees!

This term is going very quickly and shows little chance of slowing down. I would like to mention a big thanks to all of the parents from our school who have acted as coach, manager or helped in anyway with our sports teams over the winter months. Also a big congratulations to all of our pupils who have been selected for representative teams over the past months.

Sport is one of those events in life that it is always important to challenge yourself in or you will never know just what you can really achieve, but the other factor to remember is the ‘rule of 10,000’ it is believed that to achieve success of a high standard in anything it requires 10,000 hours of application, all successful people have put this amount of practice in.

So just because you don’t make teams when young don’t get upset, if you really want to be good at something—keep working on it.

Have a great week,

Mike Brosnahan

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,

School is a very busy place at the moment with pupils preparing for our cross country, choir festival and ‘Stars on Stage’. Miss Cooper and the ’Stars on Stage’ cast have been working very hard often in their own time to put together a top level presentation.

The arts have long been a forgotten area of our education system in New Zealand and I am very pleased that, driven by a group of motivated teachers, their importance is again being recognised.

As a society we must strive to cater for the skill, interest, needs and talents of all of our citizens and while we in New Zealand focus a lot of our interests on sports and sporting prowess, I assure you that this is not the case throughout the world.

The key for any successful society is to have balanced education of learning: the academic, the artistic and the physical equally.

Often you will find pupils who struggle in other areas come to life with enthusiasm and energy when performing. Pupils who are quiet in class speak forcefully and with much motivation in a debate setting, they beam confidence in a choir, their artwork tells a story.

We as a society must remember that while the basics in all areas are very important the parable of the talents tells us that all talents are God given and should be used. How easy would it have been for van Gogh to stay with his family in Holland or Beethoven to say I can’t hear anymore.

So please encourage your child to have a go at the arts we offer at school: choir, Stars on Stage, public speaking, guitar and piano lessons, a school production, and of course in class learning drama, dance, music and the visual arts.

I will leave for final word for this week to William Bennett the former US Secretary of Education who said “The arts are an essential element of education, just like reading, writing and arithmetic. Music, dance, painting, and theatre are all keys that unlock profound human understanding and accomplishment”

Have a great week, Mike Brosnahan.