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

 

One of the gifts that my son got for Christmas was a book on Bear Grylls the explorer, adventurer and television host.  The theme of the book is how to enjoy and be successful in life.  He uses a number of metaphors based on putting himself in life threatening situations and working on how to get out of them, and equating this with everyday life.  One theme that comes through strongly is to stay positive and to try to surround your self with positive people.  For many of us this maybe an aspirational goal but I know that when I work with positive people I look forward to accepting the challenge, even if I know it will be difficult.

 

I coach a cricket team with a guy who is always positive, he always sees the glass half full.  A player gets a first ball duck and Craig will find a positive.  After all the player is already feeling bad he doesn’t need any negative vibes.  Think about what happened in the cool light of day and work on it at practice.

Our team faces challenges, we have a vast range of talents.  These are mainly Year 12 and 13 boys so we have personality and attitudes to deal with, but because we have a positive environment the task never seems daunting, win, lose or draw.

Bear has a lot of points on how to maintain a positive focus, but one that I thought was really good was to look at failures as steps to success.  I think the other point is to strive to see the good in everyone and in every situation, not always easy but with practice it becomes a habit.  A great example would be the rebuild of the school, the challenges have been huge, but the gain is immense. Bear was in the SAS and their motto is ‘who dares wins’.  You can’t be more positive than this.

Have a great week.

Mike Brosnahan, Principal

 

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

 

Well here we are well into week six.  This week the junior classes have begun their swimming lessons with Swimsation; learning to swim when you live in New Zealand is not just developing a pastime but rather it is learning a potential life skill that could be life saving.

As a nation we live around the sea, lakes and rivers, not to mention swimming pools.  When we get hot we all enjoy having a ‘dip’ to cool down but the trouble is that not all of the places people choose to swim are benign.  While lessons that your children receive at school will not make them Olympic champions they will develop their skills.

 

Please remember that on Monday next week 18th March all the teachers will be attending a paid union meeting, please read the notice for more information.

 

The reorganization of our school bus routes is now being ‘re-viewed’ while there will be no change for people who live within 3.2km of our school, those who live further than this may find themselves on an adjusted route.  As soon as I have a definite plan I will contact parents directly to explain how the new bus routes will operate.

 

Have a great week.

Mike Brosnahan

Principal

 

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

Well week five of the term already, the children at the moment are busily completing their PAT test.  These tests are important as they are internationally recognized standardized tests and are a good way of moderating our reading and maths results, this ensures that our view of a pupils achievement lines up with what other people think.

 

On Monday the 18th of March the teachers will be attending a Union meeting in Dunedin, please read the accompanying note about this later in the newsletter.

A number of other events are coming up over the next weeks so please ensure that you keep a close eye on the diary of events section.

I would like to make special mention here of Jayden Grindley in Year Eight: Jayden has been

selected to take part in the Burnley Development Centre programme, this is a programme for identified talented young footballers where they receive 45 weeks of elite coaching.

Football has long since identified that to achieve at the elite level you need to put in a large number of hours of practice (10,000 hours).  So well done Jayden on this prestigious selection.

 

Also well done to all of those who took part in the Weetbix Kids Triathlon and thank you to Mrs Lisa Matheson for organizing this.

 

Have a great week.

Mike Brosnahan

Principal

 

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

Week four for the term and the site continues to develop.  The soil area has now all been worked up and grass seed sown.   The courts have been marked for basketball and netball (with four square and hop scotch to come).  The netball holes are in and the senior toilets will be ready on Wednesday, and tomorrow we will have our sliding storage cabinet put in Resource Room 1.

At home at the moment we have an exchange student from Edagowa Girls School in Japan. 

Mika is obviously a very courageous young lady to travel to another country where she only has a very basic grasp of the language with a very different culture, it would be a challenge that few would want.  Yet she has accepted the challenge and appears (after 24 hours) to be enjoying her stay in the country.

One of the focii of the New Zealand curriculum is to make our pupils global citizens and while few people get the chance to experience a different culture while at school there are few better ways of learning empathy, resilience and self reliance than really challenging your self.

A number of years ago I was travelling in Thailand when I finished up in a large market, far from the tourist trail, I looked around and I was the only non Thai there, (it was after all Thailand).  I spoke only a few words of Thai and we don’t share a common alphabet, even their numeric system is different and yet they made me feel welcome.  We communicated with drawing, hand signals and body language, from this lesson I learned that people are normally kind and welcoming and just because they look different doesn’t mean they wont accept you.

 

Have a great week.

Mike Brosnahan

Principal

 

Dear Parents, Caregivers and Friends of St Mary’s School,
Well its week three already and as we anticipated this term is flying!
Please keep an eye on the diary of upcoming events to ensure that you don’t miss any events.
Work continues on with various activities on site—the senior toilets will be finished by the end of
the week, the library is progressing albeit in fits and starts, and progress continues on the ground
work. Bill Hayden the Manager of Catholic Property Services has intimated that we should be
totally all go by the end of the term. The hard work put in by the staff in difficult conditions has to
be noted here. Many things that we take for granted do not happen simply, even to get a phone
hook up has taken weeks of phone calls and heated conversations.
So please if you have a moment tell them what a great job that they are doing, for while it hasn’t
come easy I think that we all agree that the finished product will be worth the effort.
Have a great week.
Mike Brosnahan
Principal

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

‘It’s the final countdown’ as the group Europe sang.

I have begun attending the usual end of year celebrations and as the gentleman who was officiating at a service that I attended on Sunday said when you hear Christmas songs it tells you that Christmas is here.

It’s also a time of reflection and we at St Mary’s can reflect on a highly successful year.
It seems a long time ago, but our visit from the Education Review Office team was very positive and
complimentary.  They identified the excellent education that pupils receive at St Mary’s and this was
further born out by our excellent National Standards results.  Few schools would have produced the
excellent results that we have. 

Our mid season musical was also highly successful and it along with our excellent choir and brilliant Kapa Haka group shows that we are able to offer breadth as well as depth in our curriculum.

Our pupils have once again achieved some excellent results.  Some highlights that I would like to mention are the winning intermediate relay team and the senior boys basketball teams, where one team won the round robin and one team won the final—so St Mary’s was first and second in the grade.  Also the Year 7/8 and Year 5/6 Netball teams were also very successful winning their grades.  A great effort!

 

Now we see our new school rising up rapidly and so much of my time seems to be spent on coordinating aspects of this.  But as I see on each site meeting we are going to truly have a venue that is new and modern and helps to support our teachers and learners.

 

I would like to finish by saying a huge thank you to all of the people who help make our school a huge success: The BOT and especially the Chair, Donald Mitchell, few people realize the time and effort that he puts in and especially the key role that he plays with regards to the shift.

The PTA capably lead by Jacqui Dodson, do so much more than raise money (and they do this very well) but they also help to give our school a real sense of community.

To all of the parents who help in so many ways, by either coaching or managing teams, going on trips or camps, helping in class or just being supportive, to you all I say have a Merry and Holy Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

 

Have a great holiday—Mike Brosnahan

 

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

The second to last week of the term for us and like all schools this is a very busy time.

It is also a poignant time as we continue to prepare for our move to 87 Church Street.
Last week Donald Mitchell and I attended our fortnightly site meeting and the progress that had been made over the previous fortnight was amazing.
The new school is really starting to take shape and it will be amazing for our pupils to continue on their learning journey.

 Reports go out this Friday, so please read them carefully and discuss the contents of them with your child.  They are designed to show a learning path where both school and home can work together to achieve the best for our learners.

 

The results for our pupils against National Standards was excellent.  This information will be included in the end of year Board of Trustees newsletter but I would like to say that we as a school community should be very proud of all that we have achieved over the preceding year.

 

In next week’s newsletter I will list our highlights for the year and also timetable the upcoming events for the remainder of this year and the beginning of 2013.

 

Have a great week

Mike Brosnahan