Welcome back to Term 3

Hello all.

Welcome back to Term 3. I'm sure we will have another busy term.

We welcome some new staff to Freeville School this term. Kate has been at Freeville working part time for a few weeks but starting today she will be full time in Room 10.

Caroline has traveled all the way from Ireland to join us in Room 7. Welcome Caroline.

Su will be teaching in LT4 for the first two weeks of the term and then Sharon will be taking over that role.

Over the term I will use this blog to highlight some things for your interest. I thought I'd start with letting you know about a few things that are on my radar for the term.

Last term we had a visit from the Education Review Office (ERO). This is the government organisation that  monitors and reports on school performance. We will get the draft report in a few weeks and then later in the term the final report will come out. As we went through the process of describing the things that we are doing at Freeville I was reminded again about why I am so proud to work here. There are so many brilliant people and programmes and our strong focus on learning shines through in all the things that we do.

Nicole, Bernice and I had the privilege to present at a conference in Auckland in the first week of the holidays. We were sharing some of the things that we do at Freeville and again it was marvelous to be able to talk with confidence about innovative programmes and the many ways that we are meeting the learning needs of our children.

.... That said... we don't always get it right and we do care very much about sorting things out when they are small problems. If you have an issue we would much rather you brought it to our attention so that we can deal with it. If you have a concern about something that has happened at school the first point of call is your child's teacher. Allow them the chance to try and sort it out at the lowest level. If the issue is still not sorted then the Team Leaders are the appropriate people to talk to. If it is a more serious issue or you feel the issue has not been resolved then make a time to talk with Paul.

Professional development for our staff is important as we constantly look to improve our performance as a school. This year we have had a focus on Mathematics and we are continuing to have staff meetings and professional development activities to help us improve our Maths teaching.

We also believe strongly in the value of bilingual education and the importance for us to have an understanding of Te Reo and Tikanga Maori. We will be looking at how we can promote our bilingual programme and grow it further. As part of that I will be sending out a survey to the whole school community asking for and indication of your interest in bilingual education for your child. This information will help us as we plan for 2013.

We value our families so much and want to continue to support you as we all work together through the next few years of recovery. Please remember that we have help available from the Methodist Mission and the Salvation Army. We want to be able to support families facing difficulty so please continue to let us know if there is anything we can do to help. We can access counseling for families and children and will do our best to put you in touch with whatever other support you need. Please just come and ask.

Later in the term we will be having our in4m conference. Look out for more detail on that coming soon. 

We have been working on our Freeville Curriculum over the last couple of years. It has been in draft form for a while but is nearly ready to be launched. More on this will follow.


Finally I want to acknowledge the great work that our staff do. Our teachers and support staff are caring, motivated, adaptable, and creative. They work hard at communicating clearly and thinking critically about what they are doing and we all try to maintain a globalist perspective and be aware of how what we do has an impact on others.

Thank you for helping make Freeville School the fantastic school that it is.

Paul