Ngā mihi nui kia koutou katoa - greetings to you all.
We have had a busy and exciting week in the hubs. Our Kelly Sports programme based around the traditional Māori game of Ki-o-Rahi is in its second week of the eight week module. All ākonga take part in a Kelly Sports session each week, with our younger students learning skills and games based on cooperation and ball skills, and our older students increasing the complexity of these skills, building up to our year 5 and 6 students who are learning to play the full game of Ki-o-Rahi. The sessions are fun and engaging for students, and seem to be very popular.
Along with our Ki-o-Rahi sessions and our co-curricular sessions, that have also started for some students on Wednesdays and Fridays, we also had our hub inquiry trips to Te Papa this week, to visit the incredible Dinosaurs of Patagonia exhibition. If you have not yet seen the exhibition, make sure you head along. It is fantastic and your tamariki can now show you around and share fabulous facts with you. I now know that you can tell if a creature is a dinosaur by checking for several holes in the top of the skull, and checking that its legs (two or four) are all directly underneath the body, not out to the side.
With Pedal Ready for our year 5 and 6 students coming up, and Movin’ March rushing up quickly for everyone, the fun and busyness just continues. We also have the first of our parent focus sessions coming up. On Thursday 29th we have our first discussion session of the year for parents and whānau of year 1 students. Come along from 5-6pm in the Library to meet other parents and chat with them and Urs about what is important to you about your child’s learning.
Student safety
With all of the movement and busyness going on, it is important for us to work together to keep our tamariki safe, especially around the car park and the roads around school.
Here is the car park safety procedure, explaining how our car park and drop off area works safely. Please ensure that anyone picking your child up in a vehicle is familiar with these expectations.
Thank you for helping to keep ngā tamariki (our children) safe.
Introducing staff
And finally, we will continue to get to know our kaimahi (staff) a little better by introducing several staff members each week.
Brian Wilson
Brian joined Amesbury School as our caretaker in 2014, and has since become our full time cleaner and caretaker. Brian is the main reason our school looks in such tip top shape, with his care and dedication to keeping our school a safe and clean place. With his constantly cheery and friendly disposition, no job is too much trouble, whether it is getting a stray shoe off the roof, keeping all the spaces clean, or jumping on pizza boxes to flatten them down (we think he enjoys this task the most).
As with a number of our staff, Brian is very much a local, living just down the road from school. I often see Brian and his wife, Lynn, driving up and down Amesbury Drive and giving a cheery wave. Brian also used to be around school on a Saturday taking his two daughters to music lessons with Encore. He spends a lot of free time playing golf and spending time with his family in Wellington and up in Fielding.
Brian is a hugely valued member of our team and we love his friendly nature and cheery greetings, and the way he sings along to his music when he is cleaning in the evening.
Brydon Gillam
Brydon has joined Amesbury School this year from Maidstone Intermediate School. He is in third year of teaching, having moved to teaching from a career with the Co-operative Bank. Brydon has strong relationship management skills and is enjoying establishing good connections with staff and ākonga at Amesbury. With his background in banking, he has a particular passion for maths and financial literacy, and he enjoys helping ākonga see and understand the real world applications for their maths learning.
Outside of school Brydon lives just down the road in Newlands with his wife, Natasha, and his two young children. He loves spending time outdoors, and feels most at peace hanging out at the beach. We love having Brydon as part of our fabulous Pōhutukawa team.
Kate Dammer
Kate is one of our fabulous team of kaiako (teachers) working in Koru Hub this year. She is based in our Kōwhai area (yellow carpet) alongside Sophia and Lauren, working largely with our year 2 and 3 whānau groups. Kate particularly enjoys working with junior aged tamariki, as she loves the amazing growth they make in their early years at school. Kate has been teaching for a number of years and has joined us from Wadestown School. She is really enjoying the collaborative approach to teaching at Amesbury, forming great connections with the other Koru teachers and getting to know ākonga in the hub.
Kate is a keen reader and also enjoys spending time each year skiing. She loves mixing things up, and changes the colour of her nails every few weeks. Come and introduce yourself to Kate while checking out her colour of choice for her nails this week!
Lisa Bengtsson
Lisa is one of our foundation staff members, having been part of opening the school in our first year in 2012. Many of the systems and processes that are now part of the furniture at school have come about from that first group of kaimahi (staff), and if you ask Lisa about a process or way of being at Amesbury, she can usually tell you how it came about.
Lisa has worked in all teams across the school, from starting off when we opened as a teacher with our youngest students in Koru, to working in our senior leadership team and also with our oldest students in Pōhutukawa. For the past couple of years Lisa has worked as a learning partner in Pōhutukawa Hub, a role we have created to enable experienced teachers to work and coach alongside other teachers, supporting them in their growth and development. Lisa does this three days a week, and on Thursdays and Fridays each week she works as an Across School Leader in our kāhui cluster of ten schools, working with leaders and teachers in all schools to support them with their work on our kāhui challenge around creating confident, capable, empowered learners.
One of Lisa’s big passions in teaching is around developing effective and innovative learning environments and using the learning spaces to support student agency and self directed learning. Outside of school, Lisa is a keen biker and can often be seen dashing about in her bright pink cycling gear. Her family are also keen orienteers and spend most weekends and holidays taking part in various competitions and orienteering events.
The Bengtsson whānau will soon be heading off on an exciting adventure to spend a year in Sweden. Lisa’s husband, Magnus, is Swedish, and it has long been a goal for their two children, Mattias and Tova, to spend some time in Sweden as they grow up. Lisa will be taking a year’s leave at the end of Term 1 to do this, and will be returning in Term 2 next year. It is a big and exciting step for the family, and they are keen to get settled in Sweden before the winter sets in! We can't wait to have regular updates from them to see how they are going.
Over the next couple of weeks I will continue to introduce other kaimahi, so we can keep learning and connecting together.
Kia pai te rā whakatā - have a lovely weekend and enjoy time with whānau and friends.
Ngā mihi nui,
Urs Cunningham
