Newsletter Week 7 Term 1

Tēnā koutou katoa,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank our whānau for your continued support of the school and your children’s education. The situation in the Ukraine and the continued response to the covid pandemic has been challenging and may be causing stress and uncertainty in your household. Please get hold of the school if you would like to access any of our student support services.

While restrictions still remain in place, the 2022 school year rolls on. Athletics day was an absolute success and the Cactus programme is proving popular. Isolation requirements of household contacts and covid positive cases will continue to cause disruption. A reminder that students who are self-isolating are required to complete online classwork and assessment. Touch base with your year level dean if you have any questions.

A current message I continue to promote is to be kind. Be kind to others and be kind to yourself. He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata. What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people.

I look forward to meeting you all in the near future.

Ngā mihi nui,

Mikaere October

Principal

• Y7&8 Boostrix Immunisation - Friday 25 March
  
• Dance Showcase 1 - Wednesday 6th April
• PE3 Carey Bay Trip - Thursday/Friday 7/8 April
• Y7/8 Options Rotation 2 starts - Monday 11 April
• Year 8 Careers Day - Wednesday 13 April
• LAST DAY OF TERM 1 - Thursday 14 April
• FIRST DAY OF TERM 2 - Monday 2nd May

It has been a great start to the year in the Library, with many teachers bringing in their classes to select a book, get comfy and have a read. We need to remember how important it is for our tamariki to continue to read, expand their imagination and use the time to escape the craziness of the world. We continue to expand our book collection to entice all age levels to read and have a diverse selection of genres for students to choose from. Whanau can play an active part by encouraging children to take time out from their busy lives and pick up a book or read a story

together. It’s not just for the young ones!

Pia Mancia, Librarian

On Thursday 10th March, we were lucky enough to have published poet Sam Duckor-Jones visit our Level 2 and Level 3 English classes to conduct workshops around writing poetry. Sam is the author of poetry anthologies Party Legends and People from the pit stand up. Our ākonga were treated to readings of his original poetry as well as activities that had them crafting their own poems. And reading them aloud! This is extremely helpful for our ākonga as they are expected to complete a writing portfolio for NCEA. It was such a fun and creative experience and offered many ideas for all moving forward.

Year 7 Boostrix Immunisation

Many Year 7 students are due to have their ‘Boostrix’ vaccination. This one injection covers Diptheria, Whooping Cough and Tetanus:

Diphtheria Diphtheria affects the throat, making it hard to breathe and swallow. It may also affect the nerves, muscles, heart and skin.

Whooping cough (pertussis) This disease damages the breathing tubes. Affected children may vomit and find it difficult to breathe when they cough.

Tetanus Tetanus is a disease that can enter the body through a cut or a graze. It causes muscles to stiffen and spasm. It may affect the breathing muscles.

We believe many of the Year 7 students will have had their original Boostrix vaccination when they were a baby and at 4 years old. This is just a booster that is due at this age. It boosts their protection against the three diseases. If you want your child to be up to date with their immunisations, then this is an opportunity to get it done at school.

The immunisation nurses will be at the school on Friday 25th March 2022. The Year 7 students have received information and consent forms this week. We have also emailed families and attached consent forms, as there are a number of students away currently.

The DVD shown in the education sessions is available to view here:

https://www.healthed.govt.nz/resource/year-7-and-year-8-immunisation-dvd

Parents concerned will need to have the consent form completed and handed in to the school office by Monday 21st March 2022, so that we can order sufficient injections. There will be spare consent forms at the school office.

Immunise against HPV for Boys and Girls Year 8

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) immunisation helps protect against a virus that causes several cancers affecting both men and women. The HPV vaccine is available free for everyone 9-26 years old.

The vaccine is recommended to be given to boys and girls aged 11-12 years. The vaccine is more effective given at this age and only 2 doses are required at 6 months apart.

Waiheke Health Trust nurses will be providing this free service to students in the School.

The first HPV vaccine is scheduled to be given on Friday 25th March 2022

The immunisation nurses will be at the school on Friday 25th March 2022. The year 8 students will receive information and consent forms on 15th March. An email will be sent out to families with consent forms attached, as there are a number of students away currently.

Parents concerned will need to have the consent form completed and handed in to the school office by Monday 21st March 2022, so that we can order sufficient injections. There will be spare consent forms at the school office.

The DVD shown in the education sessions is available to view here https://www.healthed.govt.nz/resource/year-7-and-year-8-immunisation-dvd

Should you need further information feel free to contact:

School Nurse: Maggie Lethwaite on 371 9000 ext 215 / nurse@waihekehigh.school.nz

or

Child Health Nurses: Elaine Smart or Kirsten Sloan on 372 8893 / kirsten.sloan@waihekehealthtrust.nz

We provide career education from Year 7 through to Year 13. Our students are fortunate enough to have access to DreamCatcher as a career management tool. It is their own career planning portfolio that stays with them until they leave school. Students use DreamCatcher to set goals, input work experience, and research occupations. They are able to save information about jobs and where to train beyond school.

Students engage with a range of career exploration opportunities including our Year 8 Career Day, Year 9 and 10 Career Lessons, Career Taster Days (Year 12 and 13), Biannual Careers Evening or Employment Engagement Fair, Gateway Work Experience (Years 11 -13), senior interviews, and STAR short courses.

IMPORTANT CAREER DATES 2022

Employer Engagement Fair - Local employers meet with Y10-13 students at lunchtime.

Wednesday 19 October

Career Taster Day - Students try out a training provider or job of interest for a day.

Year 12 & 13 - Friday 1 July

Career Awareness Days - Self-assessments, career research, speakers, and CV-building.

Year 8 - Wednesday 13 April

Year 11 - Friday 1 July

Year 12 - Thursday 30 June

Year 13 - Wednesday 29 June

Year 10 Subject Selection - Information about growth industries and subjects on offer. An opportunity to discuss career ideas and subjects with deans, HOFs, and career advisors.

Wednesday 14 September - periods 1-3

If you would like to know more, please email Tanique Deacon: deacont@waihekehigh.school.nz

For those wanting to extend their Mathematics knowledge, Mr Yesli is holding Maths Help classes every Tuesday lunchtime in A3. All welcome.

We are committed to improving the hauora of our students, tumuaki, kaiako, whānau and the community. We know that healthy eating provides our tamariki with more energy, and improves attendance, attention and behaviour. Therefore, it is important that our school has a healthy food and drink environment.

We are currently undertaking a comprehensive review of our food and drink policy, provision and environment to ensure that we meet the national guidelines and support our tamariki to develop healthy eating habits.

We are aiming to put students and whānau at the centre of our decision making, enabling everyone to be involved in deciding what matters, and strengthening their commitment towards the kaupapa of healthy eating. Our priority is to gain feedback from students, whānau, kaiako, and the wider community.

You will have recently received an email with a link to a Google Form online survey around food and drink provision, breakfast and food sustainability at Waiheke High School. We would appreciate it if you could take the time to answer the questions in this survey to help to shape our future decision making around food and drink at Waiheke High School. This survey will close on Friday 25th March.

We will also be reaching out to our community in the next few months to establish a working group that strives to implement new ideas around healthy food and drink at Waiheke High School. We will update you on our progress in the next school newsletter and also on our social media pages.

If you have not received an email, you can access the survey directly from the following link:

https://forms.gle/5YfUMt4v1SHHD1eW7

Students’ will also be completing a similar survey in class. The student survey is available via the following link: https://forms.gle/9eXtorWTZnpqAx1e9

Please feel free to contact Mrs Rose or the Senior Lead Team for further information on our healthy food and drink review.

Friday 18th February was our annual athletics day. Attendance was fantastic and it was great to see so many of our students and staff enjoying a day of sports and physical activity. Well done to all of those that took part. A special shout-out goes to Acacia Perry who broke a 32-year-old record in Shot Put. We also had some outstanding performances in High Jump by Lexus Colman and Ashley Mutize, and Javelin by Kip Hailstone. We look forward to seeing how these students perform at the College Sport Athletics meet next week.

The House competition was a close contest, and the lead changed throughout the day. Congratulations to Rangitoto for taking out the title this year for both participation and overall wins. Congratulations also goes to the staff relay team who beat the prefect team with a nail-biting finish.

Rebecca Cunningham-Rose

What a great start to 2022 for our sporting program at Waiheke High School. Our sports timetable for Term 1 is jam packed with a variety of sports/clubs. The commitment from the students has been outstanding so far so please, as parents, keep encouraging them to go along to their morning, lunchtime or after school activities, trainings or clubs.

I would like to thank all the teachers, parents and coaches who have been involved this term to help and encourage our children to be a part of a team/club and to keep themselves active and fit. Let’s keep this going!

Touch Rugby

Tony Wood and Sam Carroll have been awesome with these two young teams. With numbers being a little low at times the Junior and Senior teams have quite often had to join together and play two games in a night to help each other out. The improvement from both sides has been outstanding. I love it when I hear the students say around the school, “yay it's Thursday, we have touch tonight!”

The participation of our new principal Mikaere has been a real inspiration for our students to play alongside their leader.

Ocean Swimming

Rebecca Rose and Mr Duckor-Jones have been taking this small but committed group of four every Monday after school. They swim around 2.5km which it's pretty impressive. Rebecca Rose would like to make a special mention to these young swimmers as they also participate in the swimming lessons at the school pool every Wednesday morning: Genevieve Blackburn, Nina Landhuis, Charlotte Hussey and Pippa Venn Meehan.

Tag Rugby

This has been a new sport for Waiheke High that Mr October has been teaching every Tuesday lunch time. We have a mixture of age groups which is great. Its nice to see our older students encouraging the younger ones.

Basketball

Sam Carroll is getting an amazing turnout for his Basketball trainings. He has his senior team now and is also wanting to train a Year 9/10 team to participate in an Auckland competition. So proud of these young boys turning up to trainings and working hard in preparation for the Auckland competition in Term 2 and 3.

Netball Academy

Our Netball teams are training well every Monday lunch time. They’re turning up willing to learn and train hard. This makes it fun - what an awesome group of kids!

We are looking at getting a Year 7 team to represent us at AIMS in Tauranga in Term 3, as well as a Year 9 team to play every Monday night over at the North Harbour courts. We are also very keen to have a Senior team play for Waiheke High School at the North Harbour courts Saturday mornings.

Junior Rugby and Running Club

Johnny Keevill has our Junior Rugby squad out training hard every Wednesday after school.He's very excited about the season and we are all looking forward to watching them in action over the Rugby season. Mr Keevill and myself are also enjoying our little running club that turns up every Thursday morning. This is a great way to start the day, as well as awesome preseason training for all the sports teams.

Volleyball

Mr G has his Volleyball academy up and running, every morning before school. There is always a great turn out for Mr G's academy.

Tennis

Marilyn, from the Waiheke Tennis club, is coaching 12 of our young students every Thursday after school. She has reported back to me that they are one of the best groups she's ever had the pleasure of coaching. The improvement is outstanding. We will be running Tennis lessons again in Term 4.

Athletics - Auckland Champs

We have our first trip to the city for sports this term which is very exciting. Five of our athletes qualified for the Auckland Athletic Champs and Kipling Hailstone, Acacia Perry and Atareta Heta are competing this week. We will update you all how they go in the next school newsletter.

We also have our Sailing team underway, Trampolining, Badminton, Yoga, Chess, and Football academy.

Thank you to all families for your support with our sporting program. It is so important for our children to keep themselves active, fit and healthy.

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind!

Shelley Foster

Sports Coordinator

For the last 4 weeks twenty students have been part of a new initiative at Waiheke High School called CACTUS. CACTUS stands for Combined Adolescent Challenge Training Unit and Support and it is an intensive elite leadership and life-skills training program for young people between 14 and 18 years of age.

Although new to our school it has been very successful in other schools around the country and CACTUS graduates have learned to apply effort, discipline and commitment to overcome obstacles and achieve daunting personal and team challenges. Carefully targeted life skills training, career education and mentoring is offered on each course.

CACTUS is not for the faint-hearted. Our twenty students have one-hour physical training sessions based on armed forces exercises at 6.00am every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This is followed by showers, breakfast and then coaching and goal-setting activities that finish in time for students to start school for the day.

Our students are now half way through the program which runs for 8 weeks. The course will finish with ‘The Longest Day’ where participants demonstrate initiative, creativity, stamina and teamwork skills to achieve a series of tough personal and group challenges. We hope to celebrate the end of the course with a special graduation event for our trainees and their families, the wider CACTUS support crew and invited guests.

Waiheke High School would like to thank local police constables Kat Bourke and Paul Robinson for their incredible effort to bring this initiative to our school and to organise, manage and lead these early morning sessions. Talking to staff and students we can already see what a fantastic impact CACTUS is having on the young men and women who have committed to the programme.

Special thanks to two of our teachers, Chanette Büttner and Avi Duckor-Jones who support Kat and Paul and our students every morning as well. It makes a big difference to our students to see their teachers actively participating in all the exercises.

None of this would be possible without the support of our wonderful community and we want to acknowledge the groups who have helped to make CACTUS possible: the Waiheke Island Rotary Club, the Waiheke Local Board, Waiheke Placemakers, Waiheke Countdown, Waiheke Laundry World, and the parents who help with breakfast and get our students to the early morning start. This is truly a community effort and it is fantastic to see this new initiative having such wonderful outcomes! We hope to post more photos and another report on the second half of the course.

The Level 3 Biology students completed their annual water testing at different sites along the Hook’s stream as part of their NCEA practical investigation. They compared their data with previous years and can see the positive impact that the wetland planting is having on improving the overall health of the stream. Students found contamination, including high phosphate levels at one of the sites and have the opportunity to be involved in further investigation to look at possible reasons for this.

Principal:
Mikaere October

Senior Management:

Tony Sears (Deputy Principal)
Rachael Wheeler (Business Manager)

Email: Enquiries@waihekehigh.school.nz
Website: http://waihekehigh.school.nz/
Location: 11 Donald Bruce Rd, Surfdale, Waiheke Island 1081, New Zealand
Phone: (09) 371-9000
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WaihekeHighSchool/