The launch of the Kahunui Experience

FAR LEFT:

Nellie McKegg is wearing the Year 13 casual tie around her wrist!

TOP RIGHT:

Year 0–10 jersey LEFT: Year 12 tie BOTTOM: Our new pantsuit, pictured with our Year 7 summer uniform and blazer —

Our new PE and Sports uniform

Our new PE and sports range is both stylish and comfortable. As part of the design process for the new range, we were cognisant of the need to be more sustainable in our selections. Instead of multiple items for each code, the items were designed to work together and be multi-functional, thereby reducing the total number of items families need to purchase.

The importance of serving in the community 5

By Love Serve is so much more than our school motto. It is an ethos which lives across all aspects of school life and prepares our girls for the future. We spoke to Chaplain Joubert about why it’s so important for girls to serve in the community.

Evidence in New Zealand and abroad demonstrates schools with clearly defined service programmes produce stronger academic results. There is also proof that helping others has a calming effect on the brain and reduces individual stress.

One of the key components of Global Citizenship ‘Service’ comes from UNESCO’s fifth pillar of education: Learning to Transform Oneself and Society. As such, a large amount of time at St Cuthbert’s is devoted to service projects.

Various service projects take place at St Cuthbert’s including providing practical help and fundraising to organisations such as the Make a Wish Foundation, supporting communities coping with natural disasters, and helping peers with personal adversity.

Chaplain Joubert says serving not only enriches the communities the girls are a part of but provides our girls with a great sense of fulfilment.

“It’s not just about going in there and giving, it’s about what we can go in and learn. One time in assembly I said, ‘By Love Serve’ is our motto, not ‘By Guilt Serve’. We serve because we love, not because we feel guilty or condemned.”

The service programme also enables our girls to combine both their academic studies and life skills.

“I believe in a holistic approach- spirit, soul and body, and we need to prepare the girls in all aspects. With services, it is a combination of soul and spirit, as we teach them resilience and show them how to put their faith into action.”

One of the service projects achieving amazing results is with Manurewa East School.

“Our relationship is very significant with Manurewa East as the students there don’t just want to receive, they also want to give back, and build their own identities and selfesteem. To me that is the sign of a project that is going to work and work well.”

Another is with Elizabeth Knox Retirement Village. Girls from across the school have visited the rest home, performing musical instruments and spending time with the residents.

“The girls go there to give but also are receiving from the residents, being acknowledged, being loved and being appreciated.”

All projects provide the girls with strong values they can take with them long after their time at St Cuthbert’s.

When we do services or build any form of relationships it teaches the girls it’s not about me it’s about the person next to me, and the more I give, the more I receive. For me, that is what prepares them for life.

ABOVE: De Paul House for Emergency Housing for Families. The girls made 90 plus parcels of winter PJ’s, personalised with the children’s names. TOP: They also spent time with the children that were at the Kindy.

6

Let curiosity guide your career journey

Old Girl Georgia Nixon has always had a passion for physics and mathematics. As the recipient of a highly competitive scholarship to the University of Cambridge, she will now be combining her interests to pursue study in quantum computing. Georgia shares with us why it’s important to let curiosity and passion for the subjects you love guide your career journey.

Old Girl Georgia Nixon (peer year 2012) has always had a strong curiosity. A curiosity, she says, was nurtured during her St. Cuthbert’s days, and by the school’s focus on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics).

“The teachers at school had an opendoor policy and always took the time to answer our questions.” At school, it felt safe to explore knowledge – “There was a lot of support in the technical subjects and success was celebrated. Those priorities carry on with you.”

STEAM is an essential part of the school curriculum and is used by our girls every day as they explore, play, and try new things. The arts play an important role, as they help build essential interpretative skills, and develop creativity and critical thinking.

Georgia’s curious nature led her to not only have a fondness for the more technical aspects of STEAM, mathematics, science, and computing, but also a love of the arts. This passion was infused throughout her education and her undergraduate degree was in piano performance.

Both interests ultimately shaped Georgia’s impressive career path. As the recipient of the highly competitive Rutherford PhD Scholarship through the Royal Society, she will spend the next few years at the University of Cambridge studying quantum simulation and its applications to quantum computing.

So, what is quantum computing? This fascinating area of research takes advantage of the strange ability of subatomic particles to exist in multiple states at the same time. This means operations can be done more quickly and more complex systems can be modelled. Quantum computers have the potential to revolutionise computing capabilities and could solve problems in areas such as chemistry, climate modelling, and disease diagnosis. One of these processes is protein folding, which is essential to understanding a wide range of biological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

“I have the opportunity to contribute to exciting research in an area that is rapidly changing. Contributions from today may drastically change the direction of the field,” says Georgia.

Georgia’s curiosity doesn’t stop there – she also has her own start-up company, Nebula Data. Nebula Data is a natural language processing (NLP) company that analyses large bodies of text on a range of hot topics such as climate change. It measures

how topics are being reported, what people are saying about them, and how this has changed over time.

“There are a huge number of potential applications of this type of analysis and I think it is becoming critically important for many organisations. It’s great to be able to shut the textbook and work with real clients on real issues,” says Georgia.

Most people think of computing and mathematics as highly practical, however Georgia explains they share many similarities with more “artistic” subjects such as music.

“It’s about identifying patterns. Music theory, at its core, is mathematical. You may not necessarily be thinking about it, but the mathematics underlies why it sounds good to you. It’s about patterns and structure, but there is a huge amount of creativity needed to put it together. Both music and mathematics share that.”

This balance between structure and creativity will shape Georgia’s next few years at Cambridge. While at Cambridge, Georgia will be working with world-leading academics in the Cavendish Laboratory, where, she says, she will be embracing the opportunity to learn, discover new ways of thinking, and will grasp every opportunity to be involved in research across physics and maths. And of course, she’ll be finding a music group; ever keeping her curiosity alive!

7

The language of education

New Zealand’s relative geographic isolation has meant that, traditionally, there has been less of an emphasis on learning a second language than in other countries around the world. However, as New Zealand’s population changes, so too has the nation’s sentiment towards embracing different languages.

We want the students to be excited about learning languages, interested in discovering different cultures, captivated by a whole new world beyond their own

Right:

Trips to Acropolis, Venus and Pompeii House —

With more people choosing to make New Zealand their home, it is no surprise that, in recent years, more Kiwis than ever are choosing to learn a second language. In 2015, the World Migration Report stated that Auckland is considered to be more culturally diverse than major cities such as New York and London and the last New Zealand Census revealed that 18.6 percent of New Zealanders could speak at least two languages. Interestingly, it was also reported that New Zealand women were more likely to be multilingual than their male counterparts, with 19.3 percent of women able to speak more than one language!

St Cuthbert’s recognises that learning a second language has proven to have positive benefits and, over the years, has grown the Languages Faculty to encompass six languages taught at the school – Chinese, French, Latin, Spanish, te reo Māori, and ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) – as well as the subject of Classics. The school boasts one of the largest languages faculties in New Zealand secondary schools. There are over 15 teachers in various different roles, plus three Language Assistants for French, Spanish and Chinese.

St Cuthbert’s Head of Faculty – Languages, Rob Griffiths, likens the Languages Faculty to the United Nations “… with our teachers coming from all around the globe and bringing a rich variety of different backgrounds and experiences to their work in the classroom.”

“Our wonderful group of staff are responsible for their individual subjects but we work together as a team to realise our collective vision as a Faculty: to develop confident and articulate students with a love of language learning and a deeper understanding of themselves and others,” says Rob.

“We want the students to be excited about learning languages, interested in discovering different cultures, captivated by a whole new world beyond their own.”

Rob, who teaches Latin and Classics, says that there are many aspects of teaching Languages that he particularly enjoys, including “… when a concept finally clicks for a student; an insightful comment which makes me stop and think; …[and] the tangents as a result of a great question.”

“Most of all, I think that teaching privileges us with the opportunity to invite wonderful young people into our lives and share in our love of learning. I love getting to know them not just as students but as people when I meet them on their first day in Year 9 and farewell them on their last day in Year 13. I have taught some students for all of their five years in the Senior School and, when they send a postcard full of excitement after visiting Rome for the first time, that’s what reignites my love of the job.”

The Languages Faculty’s passion for teaching their respective subjects is reflected in the successes of their students, with St Cuthbert’s language students consistently performing well in language competitions domestically and internationally.

This year, Year 9 Mia Vanderkolk took part in the Chinese Bridge Speech Competition in Auckland and placed second. Year 13 students Joy Tong, Jian Pan and Cybella Maffitt won silver medals in the international American National Latin Exam, with Amelia Cai winning a gold medal for her outstanding knowledge of Latin language, literature and culture.

Rob is quick to point out that the benefits of learning a language are not just reflected in the academic success of the school’s languages students. Rather, learning a second language has both cognitive and social benefits.

“The knowledge of another language allows you to cross boundaries and transcend differences in a spirit of mutual harmony and shared understanding.”

“A shopkeeper in France or a market stall holder in China will immediately embrace your efforts even if they are faltering. It’s about making an effort and having the confidence to make a mistake.” he says.

Deputy Head of Faculty, Sue Birdsall, agrees: “Learning languages gives you a different way to see the world and makes you more culturally aware and empathetic towards others. It also builds your language competency in your own first language.”

The research backs up Sue’s assertions: a 2012 study by the US-based brain research organisation, the Dana Foundation, found that studying the vocabulary of second language increases the brain’s capacity for memory and general mental alertness. When a person is concentrating on communicating in a language that isn’t the one they are used to conversing in, they need to make a more

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concerted effort to look out for both verbal and non-verbal cues.

Consequently, this means that bilingualism (being able to speak two languages), or even multilingualism (speaking more than two), improves a person’s social skills as they become more finely attuned to the subtleties and nuances in both languages.

Cultural exchanges

An important aspect of learning a language is to experience and appreciate a country and its culture firsthand. St Cuthbert’s Chinese teacher Sylvia Chen calls learning a second language an “essential tool to understand another culture.”

“By understanding another culture, it can open up your world and allow you to understand different perspectives – essential for becoming a global citizen. Learning another language allows you to get first-hand, unbiased information,” says Sylvia.

Rob agrees that the opportunity to travel can not only bring a language to life but enhance a student’s learning experience. “I think that an exchange brings the language and culture to life in a way that can never be truly replicated in a classroom. We do our very best to create an authentic environment in the classroom, but it needs to be experienced in real life to be truly appreciated,”

“Whether it is the smell of a French patisserie, the sight of the Great Wall of China, the dinner party with a Spanish family long into the night – a language comes to life in its country,” says Rob.

One student who says that travel, or the prospective thereof, can lead to a love of languages is Lola Cox. Lola, who is in Year 12, first developed an interest in learning languages in Year 7 after watching a video that some older girls had made about their cultural exchange.

“At my primary school, they didn’t offer languages, so I only started studying languages when I first St Cuthbert’s. I really wanted to do lots of travel, and I remember seeing a video for the French Exchange and thinking ‘I want to go on that!’,” she says.

Lola, who currently studies Spanish, French, as well as Classics, was one of a handful of students who travelled to the UN headquarters in Geneva in January for a week of debates, meetings and language lessons all focusing on international diplomacy.

“There were lots of people from all around the world and I got to speak both French and Spanish, so it was really good practice!” says Lola.

For Lola, learning several languages has opened doors to a number of opportunities, and she actively encourages others to give it a go: “I think everyone should learn another language because, overseas, its compulsory to learn one or two languages so it can take you to lots of places; it’s a great opportunity.”

For some students learning a language is about connecting to their own culture. Sammy Cole currently studies French, Classics, and te reo Māori, the latter of which she picked up in Year 9 in order to connect with her own whakapapa.

“My Dad’s Māori and he never really got to learn the language because he grew up

Above: Lola in Geneva Right: Sammy and French exchange student I have always been interested in the history of Europe. Classics gives you an appreciation for what we have now, based on whatever we had then.