School Interviews
Parent-teacher-student interviews are on
Tuesday 23rd August. School will be closing at 12.30pm in order to have the interviews.
Please arrange for your children to be picked up at 12.30pm from their classroom. It is important we make the time to meet together with parents, teachers and students to discuss learning progress. Children who travel on the rural buses will be provided with supervision until the buses arrive.
To book your interview go to:
https://www.schoolinterviews.co.nz/
Use code: 3c85s
Parent Consultation
Thank you to the many parents who came to our movie screenings and who shared their thoughts on the future of St Joseph's School. Our Board of Trustees will consider what you have shared and be inviting a group of parents to dig deeper into these ideas in order to help us form our vision for the future and our strategic plan for the next few years.
Things we can address immediately
RICE
One family let us know that their child would like to have their rice heated up. Thank you for letting us know that. Can that family, or others who feel the same way please contact me by phone, email or drop in? Also, anyone else who needs rice heated up. Depending on how many people, and the ages of the children, we can work something out so that hot rice is possible. If there are a few people, maybe we could get a rice cooker and provide fresh rice but we'd need to know what sort of rice. Please contact me.
CHILDREN NOT EATING
Another family asked for us to understand their culture by understanding why their children would not eat. Could that family please contact me so that we can get some further understanding on that and what we need to do to be helpful.
CONTACT ME
For anything that is something you need in your culture or just within your family, that we may not understand or have not provided for, please contact me and we will try to find a way to provide it.
Please do not feel worried about telling us something that is needed.
I come from England and even though we speak the same language as New Zealanders and have many similar customs, there are some which are different. You might feel that it should be obvious but it is sometimes not. I have many examples of things which I didn't understand when I came to New Zealand.
For instance, if people were talking about formalwear, e.g. for a wedding they would talk about men wearing a vest which in New Zealand means what I would call a waistcoat like this man is wearing:
But where I come from a vest is a piece of underwear like this:
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I have other examples. So the point I'm making is if you are in a different country there are many things taken for granted that are actually not obvious. If there is something that we don't know about your culture, or what you need, please tell us, otherwise we might not know.
Upcoming Events
We have some exciting events planned for this term:
- School Cross Country day at Oamaru Racecourse next Friday 26th August
- Year 7 & 8 camp - 31 August - 2 September - this year a snow and ice camp based at Mt Cook
- We are entering some lovely artwork in the Burns Memorial Art Exhibition
- A group of children will be performing at Feifia night on Tuesday 6th September
- Matariki Hui Ako - Our kapa haka group will be performing at the opera house on the morning of Thursday 8th September.
- Kaka haka group performing at our local library, 11am Thursday 13th of September
- Polyfest - in week 8 - a group of year 3+ children (all who want to) are going to Polyfest in Dunedin one day this week.
- The house groups are preparing for the house football tournament at the end of term and also for the house choirs competition on the last day of term.
- Our senior students are engaging in extension classes through St Kevin's.
- There is a lot going on and we are very committed to the children getting every opportunity they can have to expand their learning horizons.
Ma te Atua e manaaki a aroha,
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