Kia ora e te whānau,
We have had a busy start to the term, with lots of things going on. Co-curricular lessons started this week and we welcomed a new drum teacher, Conall, to our co-curricular team. It is great to see our new music room getting some use! Harakeke Hub headed off to the zoo for their sleepover. It sounds like growls and roars didn’t disturb their sleep too much, and they had heaps of fun during their day time zoo visit, too. Many thanks to the Harakeke team for organising all the fun, and to the parent and whānau support that helped to make the trip possible.
Staffing 2024
Now is the time of year when schools look to confirm staffing and organisation for the following year.
We have signalled about several teachers who be heading overseas or off to other schools for 2024, and we have two more teachers who have let us know they will be leaving at the end of this year:
We have a number of kaiako leaving at the end of this year, and this is indicative of the wider trend we are seeing across the education sector and also across other sectors. With the disruptions of the past few years through Covid, we have many more people heading off overseas, moving to other parts of the country and/or changing roles. This trend is also very evident in the movement we are seeing amongst our school families.
We have made a number of appointments over the past couple of weeks, and here is an overview of what our two hubs will look like in 2024. We have yet to fill our team leader role in Pōhutukawa Hub, as this vacancy has only come up very recently. We will be advertising and appointing to this role over the next few weeks. We are looking to fill a number of roles, as there were roles from earlier this year that we have filled in a temporary way, and we were always looking to appoint more permanently for the start of next year.
Koru Hub (years 1-3)
Team leader: Amaria; Learning leader: Sonali
New entrant (new five year olds) area: Angela, Wee Ai
Main Group: Sonali, Hannah, Lauren, Sophia, Aleesha, Lily
New staff in Koru:
* Wee Ai Teh: She has been teaching at Khandallah Little School for three years and is a passionate advocate around positive transition to school
* Aleesha Majaw Monisse: Aleesha has been teaching at a special school in Auckland for four years. She is a strong advocate for equity, all students getting the support and learning they need, and having learning programmes that cater to them as unique individuals
*Lily Patrick-Duncan: Lily will be a beginning teacher next year, and is moving from Dunedin to take up this role.
*Lauren may be a new name for some of you, although she has been with us throughout this year as a Masters' student.
Pōhutukawa Hub (Years 4-6)
Team leader: yet to be appointed
Learning leader: Jenny / Lisa
Teachers: Eilis, Gar Kee, Rupert, Brydon, Sarah, (team leader to be appointed)
New staff in Pōutukawa Hub:
*Brydon has been teaching at Maidstone Intermediate for two years, and is currently in a year 8 class.
*Sarah will be a beginning teacher next year, having spent about ten years as a research and information analyst. Sarah lives locally and is passionate about many things, including the local Churton Park community.
Other teachers
Kirat Singh: ELL teacher in both learning hubs
Lisa Bengtsson: learning partner and additional teaching support in Pōhutukawa for term 1 (until she goes on leave for one year, travelling to Sweden)
Jemima Colquhoun: additional teacher release / support term 1 (until she leaves to go travelling in term 2)
There will be a few changes for the start of the year, with our move back to two hubs across the school (years 1-3 and years 4-6) and some new staff joining the team. Our key focus at the start of the year will be embedding these changes and building the hub culture in each team to set us up well for the year.
As usual, we will run our transition programme in week 9 this term, where students will move to their hub for next year, if this is a change for them, and begin the settling in process with the new team. In the meantime, for the rest of this term teams will be focusing on their final term of the year in their current hubs, and having a positive and exciting end to the year.
Ngā mihi nui,
Urs Cunningham
