Dear Families,

Welcome to our third newsletter of the year.

This newsletter arrives in your inbox the Friday evening of the weekend that begins our Parish and School celebration of 175 years since Fr Garin established our parish and school here in Howick. This Sunday (March 12), Mass will be held 10am in our school hall. Our Year 6 school leaders will be commissioned for their year as servant leaders at this Mass, followed by a picnic up on our school field. We will have the waterslide out as entertainment for the children, tea and coffee from the school hall kitchen, a coffee van and face painting – lots of fun for all! All children are to attend Mass in their uniform. They are able to change after Mass into their togs for the waterslide (don’t forget a towel). The Parish Youth Group and the PTA have generously offered to cook a free sausage sizzle and will be selling drinks and iceblocks – bring small change!
After missing out on our beginning of the year picnic due to the crazy weather at the beginning of the year, what better way to connect as a parish and school. Lets all pray for fine weather!
There will be limited additional parking on the day: outside the hall for parishioners who have mobility needs, on the spare section on the corner of Stella Maris Way and up on our top field as well as on the local streets.
Please bring a picnic for your family, and enjoy fellowship and community connection; both an important part of this parish and school for 175 years!

Click here for this Sunday’s readings.

Refreshed Strategic Direction 2023-2025 In our newsletter two weeks ago I shared our refreshed Strategic Direction and gave you more information about our first goal: Confidently LIVING with Jesus as our guide. This goal focuses us on growing the wellbeing of our students and community.
This week it is my pleasure to share with you more details about our second goal: Confidently LEARNING with Jesus as our guide.

Goal 2, The second of our revised Strategic Goals is focused on how we Confidently LEARN with Jesus as our Guide. This goal focuses us on developing an understanding of our local curriculum delivery knowing the learning needs of our students and using this knowledge to ensure every learner succeeds to the best of their ability.
Through the community consultation undertaken last year at our Community Dreaming day and subsequent consultation period, our community identified themes that they believed were important to focus on when delivering our connected curriculum. Key elements such as the importance of high expectations, growing faith based citizens, using an inquiry approach, building hauora (wellbeing), having practical hands on learning experiences, valuing different cultures, celebrating diversity, building a growth mindset in our learners, encouraging creative, resilient learners who can problem solve with sound numeracy and literacy knowledge were strong elements that our community shared.
This year will be embedding the new Religious Education Programme into our localised curriculum. The Board has generously contributed planning time for our teachers in order to really do justice to this fabulous new learning programme. Our teachers are in their second year of implementation and are building on their knowledge and experiences when delivering the four main themes of Te Atua God, Te Rongopai Good News, Ā Tātou Whakapapa Our Story and Kia Noho Hāhi Being Church and the cross themes of Mana Tapu Grace, Aroha Pūmau Holiness, Whakaaronui Welcome, Tika Justice, and Īnoi Prayer.
We are embedding the practices of a structured approach to the teaching of literacy with ongoing professional development for our teachers through Massy University this year as well as embedding the strong mathematics programmes through collaborative planning and professional development when using the mathematics learning progression toolkit to ensure the learning needs of our students are met.
We were pleased that our Learner Profile which we have launched and embedded into our programmes over the last two years was well known by our families when discussing this at our Community Dreaming Day and heard great feedback as to how this had supported conversations at home when having discussions. Our Learner profile will continue to underpin our curriculum delivery, sharpening our student’s academic outcomes.
The Refreshed New Zealand Curriculum is being delivered in stages over the next few years, so we are engaging in preparation for this from this year too. To this end the Ministry of Education has instructed schools to implement a Teacher Only Day early in Term 2 to begin the professional development journey for our staff. Our Teacher Only Day is scheduled for Monday 24th April, the first day of Term 2, which is good timing as the following day is ANZAC day, a public holiday. At this Teacher Only Day we will begin exploring the foundation documents of the refreshed New Zealand Curriculum working together with our other Kahui Ako schools; St Marks, Sancta Maria Primary and KingsGate School. A further Teacher Only Day will occur in the second half of the year, however we are yet to receive instruction from the Ministry of Education as to the date range within which we are able to secure this date. Once we hear, we will let you know.
This strategic goal provides us with plenty of scope for curriculum development over the next few years.
We are looking forward to further developments over time in our students as they Confidently LEARN with Jesus as their guide.

Blessing of our new Mud Kitchen area On Tuesday of this week Fr John blessed our new Mud Kitchen play space. The blessing was a special time to give thanks for those who supported the school in raising money for the space over several galas as well as those who built the space. Our children are just loving the fun!

Celebrating birthdays at Our Lady Star of the Sea of late, our classroom teachers have noticed that the practice of bringing goodie bags into school to give to classmates on birthdays has started to become an all-too-frequent event at school. Whilst COVID prevented families from celebrating birthdays in the usual ways at home over the past few years, bringing such goodie bags to school seemed appropriate at the time. However, we are very conscious of the pressure on families around birthdays if this becomes a common practice, particularly as the contents of such bags can and seems to be getting more extravagant and expensive for families that potentially cannot afford to provide such treats. Can I please request that if families want to mark their child’s birthday by sending a small treat into school to share with the class, we keep this at a bag of lolly-pops to share or something similar and that families save the rest of the treats for sharing at birthday celebrations outside of school. Thank you for your support and understanding in this matter –  it is important for our birthday students to feel special on their special day and this is best done at school through our usual practices of prayer, song and kind gestures.

Sickness reminder We continue to see the occasional case of Covid popping up in our community. If you child has a stomach upset, has a cough or displays other cold symptoms please keep them at home until they are well enough to return to school.

Looking Back We experienced a fantastic couple of weeks with the Life Education Van at school. The specialist teacher delivered specially designed Health lessons for our tamariki. Thank you to those family members who were able to collect their children last Monday whilst our teachers attended their paid union meeting. The NZEI Teachers union is currently negotiating for better conditions for educators nation-wide. Negotiations have not gone to plan so far with impending industrial action. The Massey University Team has continued their support over the past two weeks in the delivery of a Structured Approach to Literacy throughout the school (see annual plan goal mentioned above). Last Thursday Bernard Mangakahia presented a well-being based performance for our students, furthering our first strategic goal. Our Year 5/6 cricket team represented us strongly in their first pool round at the HPPA competition on Tuesday. Our Senior Team Swimming Sports took place last Wednesday morning at Lloyd Elsmore pools with great experience and competition for all.  Our Travelwise Students Leaders had a fabulous day on Wednesday in leadership training this week. You can see images and read more about these events later in this newsletter.

Looking Ahead we are very much looking forward to seeing everyone on Sunday at our Parish / School Mass and Picnic (see details above), with Mass in the school hall beginning at 10am and the picnic following until 2pm at the latest. Next week our Travelwise Team has a Park and Walk Initiative in operation where spot prizes will be given at assembly to students who park on Orangewood Drive and walk into school. Look out for our Travelwise Team before school who will issue and click tickets for each park and walk undertaken. Our cricketers are in action again on their second day of pool play in the HPPA Cricket Competition on Tuesday of next week. Jump Rope Taster sessions are in operation on Wednesday of next week. See the note below about Strike Action on Thursday 16th March (school is closed). On Friday we will be celebrating St Patricks Day with a Mufti Day. where sudents may wear “green home” clothes and bring a gold coin to support the Caring Foundation. We will also have students attending the Interschool Swimming Zones on that day.The following Friday, March 24th we are very much looking forward to our first PTA Disco of the year (see later in this newsletter for details).

NZEI Strike Action – School Closed Thursday 16th March You will have heard in the media that Teachers who belong to the NZEI Teachers Union are going on strike on Thursday 16th March. The purpose of this strike is to send a strong message to the Government that conditions of work need to improve so teachers can best meet the needs of our young learners. Our Lady Star of the Sea will be closed Thursday 16th March while our teaching staff are on strike. Bizzy Bodz will be in operation on this day for families who need it. Thank you for your ongoing support of our school and for your understanding that our teachers, alongside teachers nationwide are intent on establishing the best conditions for our children to thrive.
A message from NZEI Union Members:
Our tamariki need a quality education. And we want to give that to them. Unfortunately, the funding for our schools is not enough for us to give us the time we would like to support all our children to thrive.
We need to attract and retain educators by ensuring that teaching is a valued and attractive profession. NZEI Principals and teachers in primary and area schools have considered at length offers from the government to settle our respective collective agreements. The offers did not meet our expectations, nor make sufficient steps toward the changes we need for our children to succeed.
You may have seen that we voted to take industrial action on 16 March. It’s the last thing we wanted to do. And the decision was not taken lightly. We felt that this was the only way the government would listen and recognise that when they support our children to learn and succeed, we are supporting whānau and communities to thrive.

Wishing you all a happy, safe and blessed fortnight ahead until we next communicate via our school newsletter.

Ngā mihi nui and cǐ zhì jìng lǐ,

Louise Campbell
Principal

Father Henry Fynes took up residence in Howick 4 May 1852 and remained as our parish priest until 1873. Father Fynes had a special concern for education. He reorganized the parish schools in Howick, Panmure and Ōtahuhu.  Father Fynes taught the children and trained the lay teachers.  He is remembered as a man of exceptional ability, great humour and total dedication to the Church and Catholic Education.

Parish School Community Mass and Picnic

We look forward to celebrating our parish Sunday morning Mass in the school hall this weekend. During the Mass our school leaders will be commissioned. The Mass and picnic that follows will be the start of our 175th Anniversary celebrations. See you all there!

Christian Witness – Putting our Faith into Action. 

Over the next two weeks there are a number of opportunities for our young learners to put their faith into action.  The Liturgy Team and Student Council will attend the upcoming Caritas Justice Chat.  The aim of these sessions is to inspire and support students to become active leaders of social justice, peace and change in their schools and to use the principles of Catholic social teaching in the process. This will be the launching point for our Caritas Challenge this year.

St Patrick is renowned for his deep faith and as a Bishop of Ireland. He was a missionary who through his work changed the heart of Ireland. Our own Bishop, Bishop Steve Lowe, is the champion of the Caring Foundation. The work of the Caring Foundation provides grant funding for the care and support of families and communities who struggle with the affects of poverty and hardship.   Next Friday 17 March, St Patrick’s day, students may wear green to school and bring a gold coin donation which will go towards the work of the Caring Foundation. 

Our school Lenten Challenge of FLOOD the FOODBANK with LOVE continues through Lent. Each week students help to deliver the food to the foodbank, help to sort it and then pack the items into food parcels. This weeks group from Room 13 worked out that if each person in the school bought one item each week we could feed 20 families per week. If each person bought two items each week we could feed 40 families per week. That would be amazing. There are so many people in our immediate community and the wider area that are in desperate need of support. Donating items to the parish foodbank is a simple way of showing your children how to put their faith into action. “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did to me.” (Matthew 25:40) 

Stations of the Cross.

At school each Friday before lunch begins, the Liturgy Team leads the Stations of the Cross. The Stations of the Cross is a form of prayer used traditionally in Lent. Each of the 14 Stations retells part of Jesus’ Passion (his suffering and death) through images and words. These Stations of the Cross introduce our young learners to Jesus’ Passion, breaking it down into stages that they can reflect upon and remember. The outdoor stations and boardwalk are a wonderful resource for our school community.  Each Friday at 7pm in the parish church, the school community is invited to gather and pray the Stations.

Mea ana te atawhai haere mai i runga i te aroha me te awhi

Mercy invites us to love and to care

Prayer Intention: E te Atua help us to be active in our faith and share Your love in word and deed.

Kia ora everyone,

On Tuesday 28th of February, your Board met for the first time in 2023.  We are delighted to be able to share with you that we have welcomed a new parent representative on our board – Shasta Dang.

“Bula Vinaka/hello to you all!
My name is Shasta and I am the newest Bishop’s Representative on the OLSOS board.

I have been part of this school for over 5 years now with my hubby Pierre and our 3 children, Kaisyn (Year 6), Kiaan (Year 4), and Poppy (Year 2). My family and I love going on adventures, traveling and food!!!

Pre-kids I worked in Project Management within Information Technology and Logistics. I have been privileged to be a stay at home mum for the last 10+ years and in that time became a self-taught baker/cake decorator and co-own a cake business with my sister-in-law.

My love for teaching my own children, learning and growing with them over the years has led me on a new journey, I am currently working as a Teacher Aide at Papatoetoe High School and in pursuit of further studies in Education with a special interest around children who have diverse learning needs.

I look forward working with and getting to know more of you in our School community. Vinaka Vakalevu and God Bless.”

At the first meeting of each year, your Board must elect (or re-appoint) a Chair (Presiding Member) and a Deputy Chair.  At this meeting, Alina Hooper was nominated and appointed as Presiding Member.

“Hi everyone,

I’m Alina, and having been a Parent Representative on our school board since 2013 I feel very privileged to be the newly elected Presiding Member of your Board!  My husband and I currently have two children at school, Marceline in Year 3,  and Caleb now in Year 6, (with our 3 year old Peyton yet to start).

My background is Leadership in the Financial Services industry, specifically Insurance and Banking, and alongside this we currently own the Lone Star restaurant at Alexandra Park in Greenlane.  I’ve loved serving on your board for the last five years, and am looking forward to continuing to do so in the years ahead”.

Sharon Yeh was nominated and appointed as Deputy Chair for 2023:

“Hi, I’m Sharon and I am a Parent Representative on your Board.  I have been a Board member for almost two years now.  I have two children at OLSOS; Marcus in year 6 and Erika in year 3.  Besides from being a busy mum, my other ‘day job’ is working in Finance.  I am a Chartered Accountant and have worked in a variety of industries in leadership positions both here in NZ and overseas.  I really enjoy supporting our school through participating as a Trustee”.

Come visit us at the Picnic!
This Sunday, after the Parish/School Mass, the PTA will be providing sausages at the picnic.   We’ll also have nice cold ice blocks and juice to buy, so don’t forget to bring some change!

The DJ is ready… come join us at the Disco!

Friday 24 March in our school hall.

$3.00 Entry, $2.00 Pizza slices, $2.00 Juice & Water, $2.00 Glow sticks and $2.00 Lolly bags.

If you could help the PTA on the night, please contact us on 021 771 969. Unaccompanied children must be signed in and out by a parent please.

Let the fun begin!

Annual General Meeting

On Monday 3 April we’ll be holding the PTA Annual General Meeting at 7pm in the staff room.  If you’re keen to join us please come along!  We’ve got a lot of exciting things planned for this year and many hands make light work!

A reminder that payment for Term 1 is due on 10.03.2023     Note that any donation payments made prior to 31.03.2023 will be included in the Tax Receipt for the financial year 01.04.2022 – 31.03.2023 which will be emailed as soon as possible after 1st April 2023.

If you would like to discuss a payment plan, please do contact Sue Yandell in strictest confidence:  [email protected]

Year 4-6 Swimming Sports

Last Wednesday the students in the senior team and some selected Year 4s headed to Lloyd Elsmore swimming pools to take part in the Year 4-6 swimming sports.

Lots of students entered the competitive races and everyone tried their best. It was great to see all students showing courage and giving something a go. The novelty races were lots of fun as was the free swim at the end. Many thanks to the fabulous parents who helped us timekeep and the supporters who joined us on the sideline to watch the fun. Special congratulations to Barbier House for winning the House relay.

Below are the results from the day…

HPPA Cricket tournament
Congratulations to our Year 5 and 6 cricket team who represented the school in their first day of pool games on Tuesday the 7th of March. The team bonded well as a unit and supported each other to come away with 3 wins out of 4 games. Their last game went down to the wire with the team losing by just 2 runs! Every player played to the best of their ability and improved their skills as the day wore on. There were some spectacular fielding moments and a fair few 4s and 6s hit on the day. Special thanks to our coach, Dave Grant, and our sideline supporters who helped us out and cheered us on during the day.

Bernard Mangakahia
On the 2nd of March the school were treated to an amazing show by Bernard Mangakahia.  It was entitled “Mana”. This show was funded by your parental donations.

Bernard shared the story of his life and took us on a journey around the islands of Polynesia that he connects with teaching us the customs and dances of each place we ‘visited’.

Bernard had some very important messages to share with us. Some of them included.. “Face up to your challenges”, “Ask for help to overcome your challenges”, “Have a dream and hold onto it”, “Have courage to challenge yourself to follow your dream”.

Each one of us walked away proud of who we are interested to find out more about our own story.

Travelwise Leadership Day
On Wednesday 8 March, the Travel wise team went to a leadership day with Auckland Transport. The first activity we did was about the Walking School Bus. There was a very cute mascot called Wanda. The second activity was about parking and we had to make posters to tell parents to drop their kids off and let them walk. Then we went on to Puhinui Rd in our high viz jackets and we used speed guns to measure how fast cars were going. Afterwards we went to the Auditorium and looked at all the resources that we can use with Travelwise. We saw 2 more mascots. Lastly, we went to learn about active ways of going to school.

We learnt a lot about being safe. It was really helpful for us as a team and we were proud of our involvement.

The Travel wise Team

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BARADENE COLLEGE

Enrolments for Year 7, 2024 and for limited places in other Year levels are being accepted now and will close at 3pm on Friday 17 March, 2023.

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Sacred Heart Enrolment Applications for Year 7 and Year 9 for 2024 are now open
A Sacred Heart education provides a foundation of faith and aspiration to succeed at the highest level in personal and professional life. Places are available in Years 7 and 9 in 2024, with Boarding available from Year 9. Applications are prioritised in accordance with our Enrolment Scheme. Scholarships are available.

Applications for enrolment close Friday 31 March 2023. Apply online here. Visit www.sacredheart.school.nz for more information.

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Take the Road Safety online Test

How good are you and your family at knowing the road safety rules? Take the test and see…

Trafficquiz.com is a FREE to use website developed with an aim to spread awareness about road safety and traffic rules.

The links are as follows:

1.    For Age group (5 to 9 years):

https://trafficquiz.com/road-safety-quiz-junior-level-1/

2.    For Age group (10 to 15 years):

https://trafficquiz.com/road-safety-quiz-secondary-level-1/

3.  For Parents (Child safety quizzes):

https://trafficquiz.com/child-safety-quiz-for-parents-level-1/

4.    For Parents and Teachers (Traffic & road safety rules quizzes):

https://trafficquiz.com/road-safety-quiz-for-adults-level-1/

5.    For Drivers and support staff:

https://trafficquiz.com/road-safety-quiz-for-adults-level-1/

6. Road Signs quiz

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Credit Controller & Administration – Pompallier Centre

This full time role is to provide credit control and administration support to the Operations Manager for the collection of Attendance Dues for schools in the Auckland Diocese.  Hours are flexible to incorporate some evening and Saturday morning work.

Key Tasks include: Collection of compulsory school Attendance Dues; contact with school parents via outbound phone calls; follow up of unpaid accounts and Debtor ledger management.

To view the full advert and to apply, please visit our website www.aucklandcatholic.org.nz under Diocesan Services and Staff Vacancies.

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Please follow the link below to our Bizzy Bodz Star of the Sea Specialised workshops for April 2023

Star of the Sea Workshop April 2023

We are offering workshops to families who are wanting specialised holiday care.