Junior Neighbourhood Support

With my exposure to so many children at so many schools, I see a huge range in the leadership opportunities that students have.

They play a major role in the development of how the school feels. There are students who shine in many different ways.

I get a buzz from watching a confident student leading the kapa haka group, playing an instrumental solo for the assembly or running the school library over lunchtime.

In many cases now, these children were in junior classes when I started my JNS role and they have followed the leadership of students before them to now be at the senior level.

They competently reveal how much they have learnt by just being in the school, observing and taking the opportunities to be really involved.

It has been great to see and I also see it in the JNS leaders, which reinforces to me how important it is to have these on-going, stable initiatives in schools so that generations of students have a chance to excel to these roles.

One area of learning, that schools seek to develop a school culture in, is sustainability and innovation.

It is a message that children relate to, they love the natural world, and they know there are fears for our planet. With lockdown we

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all got more time with nature and it became important for our well-being.

Have a look at what the children have accomplished in several schools to make their bit of difference to our planet, see what ideas you could also start up in your home and neighbourhood.

This student created her own personalised recycling stack for the teachers’ staffroom. All the things she has labelled on the pottles can be reused or recycled within the school so a stack like this makes it easy to collect the different items. Doesn’t she look proud!

After you have eaten a huge amount of ice cream, just cut out little slots in the containers, put the lids back on and label. This student made one especially for the Hornby Police Station, the top label says ‘Police do good things’.

This student and his friends decorated a recycled white bucket with handmade stickers about protecting the environment, they included some long-handled tongs and now have a rubbish collecting kit to use at lunchtime clean-ups of the school grounds.

This school has had a focus on nature play, especially considering small group play.

So with just natural items at no cost to the school, no plastic, commercial toys, these children have been playing restaurants, hospitals, camping, cooking, families and fishing just with the natural items that can be collected on a family walk.

Ready for planting all sorts of vegies, this school’s garden now has a tunnel house made from pallets and plastic found out on the roadside.

These girls fill a can cage with aluminium cans that parents bring into school or are found on the road. When it is full it should be worth about $50, money for nothing to be spent in the school garden. Of course, all the other parts of the JNS programme continue and for a very

interrupted year, it seems like we have achieved a lot.

Learning about smoke alarms, making compliment cards with sign language actions, making cards for local families in tough times and these fantastic chalk drawings of emergency vehicles, learning what roles they have in emergencies.

Some other major events recently have been the South Hornby School bike track opening where Murray helped cook sausages on the Blue Light BBQ trailer, for the students after they had had a turn on the new track. I ensured they all had helmets on fitted correctly.

We worked with Fire and Emergency New Zealand to visit neighbours of a fatal house fire, ensuring they had smoke alarms in all sleeping areas.

I engaged any children in the houses and assured them as the smoke alarms were installed. With the Healthy Ōpāwaho project at Beckenham Ponds, I assisted Beckenham Te Kura o Pūroto School students, to plant local native species.

I overheard one girl saying “In 30 years, I’m gonna bring my children here to look at the trees I planted in this special place”. If you are part of a school and think the JNS programme would be something you would like to ask about, please contact me, contact details are at the back of this magazine.

Elissa Smith - JNS Co-ordinator