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Welcoming back Year 12 from rostering home Thursday 24 April 2022
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Advice of Teacher Only Day Friday 1 April 2022 – Teacher Well-being
Year 12
We will welcome back Year 12 from rostering home tomorrow as scheduled. While we have had further staff affected by COVID, we are confident that under the current circumstances we are able to ensure staffing levels that can support students at all year levels being at and returning to school.
This does signal an integration of our support for the hybrid learning model into our onsite learning – teachers facilitating learning in classrooms with students. Google Classroom will continue to be a source of learning support throughout the year and the work that students have done to support them to stay connected is vital. We do ask that devices we have loaned out are returned with students.
Teacher Only Day
This term has presented some significant challenges to our country, our community, and Naenae College. Throughout these challenges teachers, support staff, and agencies that work with us have stoically supported students and whānau to stay connected and for the school to remain safe and open. This is the third year of schools adapting and responding to the need of our communities. The team at Naenae College has done this willingly and courageously. They have gone the extra mile to support challenging circumstances by adapting, responding creatively, and giving generously to achieve the goal of getting through this together.
While there is a sense of having turned a corner in our efforts to respond to this crisis, we will remain vigilant in regard to further challenges that may arise. I am extremely thankful to our team for their dedication and courage through this recent Omicron outbreak, as I am of schools and public service organisations across our nation that have worked to support their communities.
Friday 1 April will be focused on supporting the well-being of our staff and is part of a wider Wellington educational initiative to acknowledge and manaaki our people. At the Greater Wellington Secondary Schools Principals Association meeting last week there was universal support for this acknowledgment and while schools will take a day that works for them for this purpose, ours will be on Friday 1 April.
My sincere hope is that this signals a slow and steady return to ‘normal’. I will, however, not hold my breath. We will be prepared to respond to the demands of the future but hope that a focus on quality teaching and learning and sustaining great outcomes for our students can once again be the thing that occupies our attention moving forward.
Lastly, thank you for your messages of support. We know that there is no one who remains unaffected by the trials of the past months. Your manaakitanga has provided vital encouragement for our efforts. For those still wrestling with COVID our support remains unflinching.
Kia kaka, ngā mihi manaaki.
Nicholas Richards
Tumuaki
Naenae College