Rotorua Lakes High School “Mauria te pono - Keep steadfastly to the truth”
NEWSLETTER ISSUE No. 24 – 30 AUGUST 2019
CHALKBOARD
From the Principal – P. 1- 3 News – P. 4 - 9 Sports – P. 9 Careers / Gateway P. 7 Notice Board – P. 7 - 8 Contact Us – P. 8 Our Sponsors – P. 9
Dear Parents / Caregivers & Whanau It has been a week of highs and not so highs at RLHS. As many of you will be aware we have been in the throws of competing prelim exams. Now comes the important part of reviewing how students performed and supporting them in their learning to ensure strong results at the end of the year. On Friday we had ‘Decades Day’ at the school with interesting sartorial outcomes! Can I apologise up-front for any staff pictures which may scare you that come out of Facebook! It’s great to see an event where everyone can have a bit of fun. Thanks to our Year 13 for organizing this. We met with the Year 12 students this week to discuss prefect applications for 2020 so they all now be aware of the process we are following. Many of our students competed in the Tough Guy and Gal challenge with the weather playing a part in setting challenging conditions. The students I have spoken with enjoyed the event but found it exhausting. I wish to take this opportunity to welcome Isidora Gonzalez-Diaz onto the Board as the student representative for the 2019 / 2020 period. Having met her, I am sure that she will be a positive addition and able to represent student views in a clear and confident manner. On a more somber note, many of you will have seen the Facebook post I have put out regarding an incident that happening on Wednesday. As I said in my post the incident was no different to what happens in all schools across New Zealand at some point in time. Having said that I was dismayed by the actions of bystanders as they supported the fight, with some starting to record it on their cell phones. I am keen to use this as an opportunity to learn from and that is why I am making a point of raising it with our community. I would encourage all parents to discuss with their children how they can either be a positive or negative influence on events dependent on the actions that they take. I was pleased to see that some of our students were intervening and trying to stop the fight escalating and would hope that this would be the attitude of all our students. This incident does not reflect the values and approaches of the majority of our students. As a school we will be meeting with groups of students over the next week to ensure that they have an opportunity to reflect on the values and approaches that we expect on a daily basis. 1