Welcome to the Principals Blog

Newsletter 1 2015

Welcome to all our school whanau to the new year at Mangonui School. Learning at our kura is a three way deal to be successful for your child. It involves, the teacher, the student and the whanau. The more you get involved and have a clearer understanding of what is happening during the 1000 hours per year your child will attend Mangonui School the better. I wrote an article for the newspaper and basically the idea was to encourage parents/ caregivers to be partners in their child’s learning.We all want our children to be successful, have options and be confident community members. To do this we must work together.

This term each class has set  up a Google Site for their class. It will have a timetable for the week and also planning for the essential learning areas (maths, reading and writing) and other resources. These are been set up so everyone can participate in learning and have a better understanding of what is happening in our classrooms. These sites go ‘live’ next week and can be accessed from the school website under the ‘Google Sites’ tab. The new learning environments that have been developed over the holidays are extremely exciting. The students are really enjoying the challenge of working together. Already we are seeing so many of the learning ‘behaviors’  we hoped we would see. Students raising to the challenge, learning discussions between students, older students working with younger, students managing their learning. This approach to learning is a major change from the traditional way we have presented education over the last 100 years. It is time for major change! We have an extremely dedicated and skilled team of staff working at Mangonui School. The huge effort that they put into planning and creating the new learning environments over the holidays was massive. 

The move back into classrooms was huge in itself and then the setting up!  Mrs A, Mr A, Mrs Pedersen, Miss V and The Dr  went well beyond what most teachers would do to prepare their learning environments. Pure dedication to getting it right for our tamariki. This year I am going to make things difficult for parents who do not get their children to school, the consistent truants. My thinking is that this is a form of neglect, to limit the chances of success at school for a child. Harsh words but I am over hearing the excuses and watching children disengage and then fail at school. At the same time we have the Ministry of Education blasting us that if children fail it is because we are not doing our job. We only have a small group of families that play this game.Lastly I would like to welcome new whanau to our school. We have an open door policy and welcome you into the school anytime you would like to visit. Developing a relationship with your child’s teacher is really important and this will not happen after one visit. So make sure you become a regular visitor. We know that you want your child to be successful at school and we are dedicated to that outcome.

Things are always changing at Mangonui School. The new learning environments are examples of this. It would have been a lot less stressful to stick to the traditional teaching approach but we believe that children from Mangonui deserve the very best. That is our aim and we hope parents will join us on the learning journey. - Dave Sedcole