School Newsletter Week 3 Term 2

Greetings, Kia ora, Kia orana, Talofa, Mālō e lelei,  Namaste, Ni Hao, Bula, Hola, Kumusta

Dear Families

On Sunday week, as a Catholic Community we celebrate Trinity Sunday as part of the Church’s liturgical year. Holy Trinity is the charism for our school community as we are named Holy Trinity Catholic Primary school, and we too celebrate this special time in the season of the church by marking the closest Friday to Trinity Sunday as our School Trinity Feast Day.

Relationship, love and unity is important to who we are and how we are at our school. We have a great example and model of relationship in the Holy Trinity – the Trinity exemplifies love – it is the love of the Father for his Son, the love of the Son for his Father and the overarching love of the life giving Holy Spirit. It is love that binds the three together. And it is this love and relationship that’s the essence of the Trinity. This is an important part of our school culture and the type of community that we want to be – where we welcome all, we participate and contribute, we build and nurture relationships, we model love and service and seek excellence in our learning and where we unite as Holy Trinity Family.

Support Staff in Schools

As part of International Support Staff Day this week, we acknowledged and celebrated the Support Staff members of our school community – Jennifer Quarterman (Office Administrator), Carolyn Harvey (Teacher Aide and Librarian) and Nina Taimalie (relieving Teacher Aide) with a special morning tea and a little gift. It’s great that we continue to thank and value our support staff for the amazing work they do in our school – supporting kaitiaki, manutaki and our children in a variety of ways – they are a bit like our mums and dads – we can’t manage without them!

Pentecost

This coming Sunday 20 May, the Church celebrates Pentecost.  Pentecost marks the end of the Easter season and is called the “birthday of the Church” as it was from this event that the disciples went forth to spread the Good News and establish the Church.  Happy Birthday!

School Parish Mass

Our Feast Day of The Holy Trinity is on Sunday 27 May.  On this special Sunday, our children will be leading the Parish Mass at 10:30am held at St Mary’s Church in Papakura.  We warmly invite all our families and whanau to attend this special Feast Day Mass as we gather together as a School Parish community.  Please note that all students are expected to come in their school uniform.

We also ask that each child donate a non-perishable grocery item that would contribute towards our Offertory basket for the Mass.  These items will go towards St Vincent de Paul in Papakura, helping them to assist families who need support.

Bullying-Free NZ Week

This week, activities within and across Learning Communities have been focussed on helping our students understand what bullying is and what they can do if they’re being bullied or see it happening. Bullying is a serious issue that all schools face and it’s important that every member of our school community knows they have a role to play in preventing and stopping bullying.

What is Bullying? …. Bullying is …
deliberate: done on purpose to cause harm
imbalanced: one person has more power
repeated: occurs more than once or has the potential to be repeated.

Bullying can be verbal, physical and/or social and it can happen in person or on-line.

Kaitiaki and students have been sharing key messages from activities and actions throughout the week – living our school Gospel values of respect/manaakitia, resilience/ngāwari, integrity/ngākau pono, excellence/hiranga, compassion/arohanui and unity/kotahitanga will encourage us to be a school that is bullying free and is focussed on love, respect and uniy for all.

PTFA (Parent Teacher Friends Association)

The Inaugural meeting of the PTFA was held this week. Thank you to parents/whanau who were able to attend and to those who sent through apologies. Although our numbers were small, we have a fantastic nucleus of enthusiastic whanau who are keen to be involved in this community group. We were able to share ideas about the purpose of a PTFA, ideas for PTFA fundraising and community building activities, the PTFA relationship with the Board of Trustees in their governance role and next steps to progress the establishment of this important forum.

The next meeting is to be held Thursday 7th June 7:00pm in the school staffroom. ALL are Welcome!

Kelly Tarlton’s & Auckland Zoo Overnight Trip

Learning Community Maunga spent an amazing time on Monday night, staying over night at Kelly Tarlton’s and visiting Auckland Zoo on the Tuesday. A big thank you to the parents and adults that supported us as parent helpers: Averil Hiddleston, Sel Seluone, Letisia Saafi, Jo Petrie and Nina and Faopusa Taimalie. You all made the event run smoothly. Also, thank you to Jennifer Quarterman for making 80 burger patties and organising Monday night’s dinner, and Peta Lindstrom for her support of the event.

Year 7&8 students from St Patrick’s School, Taupo came along for the trip with us. It was a great way to build relationships with students from another part of New Zealand and we hope to build on this relationship in the future.

 Sports

Year 5-8 Rippa Rugby and Soccer Inter-school Competitions

Over the next few weeks our Year 5/6 and 7/8 students will be training for some inter-school sporting competitions. We have three teams participating in the events with more information coming out about the specific sporting events next week.