Principal's Comment

 Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

Happy Easter to our SKC Family. Yesterday we began the Easter celebration with reading the Stations of the Cross in period five for Holy Thursday. I would like to thank Mrs Herbst who put a massive amount of time and effort into the celebration and also her team of Prefects for presenting our Stations of the Cross with sincerity and devotion. Lena Dupu and Samuel Plieger did an outstanding job maintaining the flow of the readings and our students appreciated the effort. I believe that ending a hectic term with those moments of peace were incredibly healing for us all.

You will notice that we have started advertising our Student Led Conferences. We have taken notice of the feedback we got from the community after the last SLC's which indicated that you appreciated being able to speak to subject teachers and so we are maintaining that format. However, and I appreciate this will not be welcome news, we are only able to open these up during the day time as the industrial action being undertaken by teachers at the moment requires them to only work the hours they are paid for which is between 8:30am and 4:30pm. This is a difficult time for everyone concerned as we want to support our teachers and we also want to please our community so we are juggling the situation as best as we can. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.

May the blessings of the season be upon you all.

Jo 🙏

Principal's Comment

 Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

This morning we were visited by the extremely talented Mr Robert Wilson who bought the scale model he has made of The Castle to school for us. Taking nearly 700 hours and 8 months, Mr Wilson has built this exact model replica of the Castle using MDF and 3D printing techniques. The model is absolutely phenomenal and will eventually be for sale. It is perfectly detailed even down to having the exact number of bricks of the real thing! Kara will post more detailed photos on our facebook and Alumni pages of this very special piece of Art.

This week has seen some wonderful sporting achievements with our cricket team finally breaking the drought and winning the local senior competition and our rowing teams have been doing very well at the Maadi competition. This Sunday and Monday we will continue the theme as we hold our Catholic Senior Quad tournament. I would like to thank Ms Clapperton for the massive amount of work she has done to bring this event to fruition.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the passing of Mr Barry Rusbatch who is the husband of our Business Manager, Colleen. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family at this time.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.

 God Bless

Jo Walshe

Principal's Comment

 Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

The day started early for me today as I attended the farewell breakfast for our Maadi Cup Rowers which was held in the Galley cafe on the waterfront. It was a great privilege to watch the dawn break in this beautiful part of the world in the company of so many driven, diligent and dedicated people; as coaches, students and whānau all gathered to wish our North Otago teams the very best of luck.

It has been a rich and varied sporting week this week as our Volleyball players once again had fantastic success at the Aoraki Championships and our Cricket First XI anticipate what must surely be finals glory this weekend! I would like to thank Ms Clapperton, Mrs Laragua, Mr Hose, Mr Smith and Mr Fowler for the tireless work they do in ensuring that these codes are supported and that our students get exposure on the regional and national scenes.

Finally, I would like to pass on to whānau a message from the Catholic Education Office. As you will know, school fees are due 31st March. At $950.00, the charges for St Kevins College is one of the lowest fees for a Catholic secondary school in the country. This fee covers the costs that the government does not cover with regards to the non - integrated aspects of our school. St Kevin's College does not collect this money, this is collected by the Dunedin Diocese. If you are having issues with payment or if you need to make arrangements to pay this fee over time, please contact the Dues Office as soon as possible at the following email or phone number:

Email: dues@cdd.org.nz or telephone 03 2220006 

The Catholic Education Office is more than happy to work with you to develop a payment plan that will make paying these fees far more painless.

Thanks to my gorgeous Year 9 models for this great picture of Science class.

Have a great weekend.

God Bless

Jo

Principal's Comment

 Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

I have a mixed bag of news this week, so thought I would share this amazing picture of our College taken from the Redcastle Door by our Alternative Education Learning Assistant Lorena Marshall. Lorena has taken many of the pictures we have used in our marketing materials over the past few months and I think you will agree she has an extraordinary gift for capturing the beauty we are surrounded with here at the College. I would like to thank her for sharing her gifts and talents with us.

Covid has continued to spread through the College this week with our having ten students away as confirmed cases today and one staff member with the virus. Thank you for your vigilance in testing and for your communication around absences.

On Thursday 16th March, our staff members who are part of the PPTA union will be going on strike along with their primary school colleagues. This industrial action is in response to a breakdown in their collective bargaining for this round. The School Board has opted to remain 'open for supervision'. This means that we will be technically open if you need a place for your students to be on Thursday if they are under the age of 14 and do not have anyone to supervise them at home. There will not be any instruction provided, as we will only have a skeleton staff on board of teachers who are not in a union or members of other unions. If anything changes in this regard next week, we will let you know.

On Wednesday, we farewelled Father Wayne from our College as he moves into retirement. All of our students took the opportunity to express their gratitude to him for his service. We wish him all the best for the future.

We launched the 'Whānau Reading Initiative this week, keep a lookout for that on social media and in the notices to find out what it is all about.

God Bless

Jo.

Principal's Comment

Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

As we head into the middle of the first term, I thought I would take this opportunity to update you on our Strategic and Annual planning and what that means for our priorities moving forward. Firstly, thank you to those of you who responded to my survey last year about our proposed Strategic Plan, having community voice is important for us as a College to ensure we are on the right track.

Our Strategic and Annual plans can be found on our super new website under "policies" along with our complaints policy and child protection policies.

In a nutshell our strategic plan over the next five years focuses on the following three things:

1. Ensuring our Special Character is implemented not only as church based teaching and learning, but that we take our understanding of the message of Christ into everything we do through our FIRE values. That means we don't just talk about being good people, we actively try to practice forgiveness, generosity, compassion and patience in our dealings with young people and their families and that we passionately and unreservedly stand up for what we believe is right, even if that ruffles feathers now and then, or even causes conflict.

2. We will focus on ensuring that our students leave school with the academic skills to manage themselves in our increasingly complex world and that our systems will not stop them from reaching their full potential. This means being as flexible as we can to developing courses and opportunities that develop the whole person.

3. We will implement the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum in a way which promotes community well being, understanding and togetherness. We see the curriculum as a call to all of our community to become familiar with the indigenous history, people and customs of our region so that we can better understand all of our individual places in the history of this land and in our own equally valued stories. These understandings are essential if we are to move respectfully into the future and meet the challenges it presents.

This featured picture is from our swimming sports last week. Well done to everyone who participated!

Have a great weekend

God bless

Jo

Principal's Comment

Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

I thought I would post this gorgeous picture of our junior Equestrian class which was taken by Kara Cox earlier this week. This class is taught by the lovely Ingela Anklew who also coaches our International students. It has been fabulous to have our International students return to the school and to see our arena start to get busy again as the term kicks off. Ingela and Jamie (who teaches our NCEA course) make incredible contributions to our College as do the team of people behind them who are happy to lend us horses for our teen riders and who encourage our riders to challenge themselves in this difficult sport.

Our sports teams have been doing exceptionally well in recent weeks, including our cricket players, rowers and all of our students who took part in our Athletics activities. Sport is a wonderful thing for teaching our young people skills in teamwork, resilience and goal setting as well as the obvious spin off it has for physical and mental health. As we gear up for winter sports trials, please encourage your young person to consider playing a sport.

Sadly, winter will soon be upon us and whilst this may seem like long range thinking I do need to indicate that winter illness, including Covid 19, as well as industrial action in the education sector may see us needing to rotate classes of students home. I am issuing this early warning so that whānau consider the importance of ensuring that their students are at school on the days when they can be. Consistent attendance now may help to mitigate any disruptions that might occur later in the year.

Have a great weekend

God Bless

Jo

Principal's Comment

 Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

As we move into the swing of the school year, things should be starting to come together in terms of our students adjusting to the new timetable and routines. Please encourage your young person to use the MUSAC app to help them stay ahead of what is happening. Important notices about events are posted on the MUSAC app 'notices' section. Notifications include things like sports sign ups, changes to the day or one off events like school photographs.

'Managing Self' is one of the Key Competencies in the New Zealand Curriculum and is an important part of growing up for our students. 'Managing self' skills include interpersonal skills such as working in a team or controlling your temper or day to day executive functioning skills such as checking time tables and being prepared with the correct tools. You can help your young person to achieve in this space by supporting them to use our SKC Diary, Google classrooms, email system and even just making good old fashioned lists of things to check before setting off out the gate.

 

A huge part of the success of young people moving through secondary school is having a good relationships with the teaching staff. On Tuesday night we had an excellent turn out of parents and caregivers at our 'Meet the teachers' event. I would like to thank all of you who attended. It was great to reconnect with some old faces and meet so many of our new SKC family.

Have a great weekend - Go The Highlanders!

God Bless Jo

Principal's Comment

Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

It has been wonderful having all of our students back this week, buzzing with news from their holidays and keen to reconnect with friends. Every year when our seniors come back, it is quite amazing how much they seem to grow and change over the holiday period. Looking up at some of the boys I swear were only at my shoulder last term helps to reinforce how quickly this precious time at secondary school goes. It is our real privilege as staff to witness the changes in our young people as they grow from nervous Year 9's into awesome, self possessed, courageous young leaders.

We celebrated that today as we held our Prefect Induction Mass. Despite the incredible heat and the sound of the very large fans we installed in the chapel, the Mass was very special. As part of the Mass, we ask that the prefects take an oath to support the students in our school, that the teachers take a similar oath and finally we ask that the school support our leaders, both staff and students. This concept of mutual respect, dependance and support is the cornerstone of a functioning community. This moment helps us to remember that not one of us can build this community by ourselves, we all bring our own unique contribution.

Head Students Shreysh and MacKenzie

We also celebrated the donation of a beautiful kahu rāki (decorated cloak) by Ms Sara Plunkett to the leadership (both students and teachers) of the school. Sara made this beautiful traditional taonga by harvesting and weaving all of the materials together, researching the patterns and studying local customs. Nola Tippa and David Higgins from Moeraki Rūnanga provided support to Sara on this journey and Nola took part in the celebration of its official welcome today. We thank Sara for this incredible gift.

Have a happy long weekend!

God Bless

Jo

Principal's Comment

 Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

Happy New Year to all of the College whānau! It has been a very busy and productive start to the year with the grounds team getting lots of work done including replacing the water tank on the hill which was damaged and removing rotten trees from the grounds. It is always sad when older trees have to be removed, but we are very conscious of replacing removed trees with others. Since 2020 we have planted over 5000 trees on SKC property and work hand in hand with local groups to ensure we are planting for both diversity and ornamentation.

2022 was a very good year at the College as we attempted to find our new post - Covid normal and we live in perpetual hope that 2023 will be even better. As Christians, we are called to hope. Over the holidays I have had that reinforced for me personally as I have had the chance to interact with my new granddaughter. This beautiful new life reinforces my need to hope and be optimistic that the world she will inherit and contribute to, will be a good place. Of course, I think she's the most beautiful baby on the earth right now and am sure she will never do anything wrong at school! (Yeah right!!)

With regards to start up procedures, everything has been posted on the website in terms of dates, keep scrolling for the uniform shop and also times for older year levels' arrival on site. If there are any issues, the office will be open next week.

Whilst there has been a lot of speculation about Covid in the news lately, we do not foresee any new protocols needing to be introduced. Please continue to be mindful about testing when unwell and let us know if your young person does have a positive test.

Here's to a great 2023!

God Bless

Jo

Principal's Comment

Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

Well, we very much know it's the end of the year, we have a lot of tired but happy faces returning from Year 10 Camp, our Year 9's have had a very good last week of mixing fun and formal classes and our teachers all look a bit shell shocked after what has been an interesting year to say the least!

In my prize giving speeches I extended my thanks to the wonderful team here at SKC who make our College what it is and to those of you in the community who work tirelessly with and for us in order to ensure that the College is a well appointed community with plenty of resources which benefit our students. I thank you again today for the incredible year we have had and I invite anyone who is thinking about joining the College community, through one of our groups, to please not hesitate.

Thanks Santa for visiting our hostel this week! 

I will be sending out a form for caregivers to fill out in order to feed into the College any ideas you have with regards to our Strategic Planning for the next three years. Please feel free to contribute your ideas and comments. Remember that the Strategic Plan is a document which captures our big ideas rather than specifics, and should set a set of priorities against which we measure the value of the multitude of initiatives that come into the purvu of a school to think about which ones to focus on.

Thank you for all of your support this year from both the wider College community and myself personally. It has been a delight working with your beautiful young people.

God Bless and have a very merry, peaceful and joyful Christmas season.

Jo Walshe

 

Principal's Comment

 Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

I feel as if I always begin this blog by talking about what a busy time we have had lately, but it is actually always true!

I was very lucky to be able to catch up with some of our Alumni in Auckland recently along with my husband Jimmy, Russell Dixon and my daughter. We took the opportunity to speak with our Alumni about our plans for the College and our desire to reconnect our College community, especially after the last few years. What I learned from those meetings is that we have an amazing community of past students with incredible stories out there. These connections are vital not only for preserving our heritage but also for our current students in order for them to understand what areas life's journey can take our Kevinians to. We met with business people, members of the armed forces and pilots to name a few. Unfortunately our trip to Canterbury to play the "Willows' tournament was postponed due to our fickle NZ weather so we will have to catch up with our Canterbury friends at a later date.

I posted earlier in the week about our Covid numbers, at the moment we are seeing the odd case, so summer holidays will be a welcome break.

Yesterday Mr Devereaux held our transition day for our new Year 8 students. This was very well run and received by the students. The feedback I have had from caregivers was that they had very tired young people at home last night which is exactly what I want to hear! Again this year numbers have been very tight, our advice is to please enrol early to avoid disappointment. St Kevin's has a capped roll which means it can only accept a limited number of students at any one time.

I would like to thank all of our staff as we move towards our final week and thank them for their tireless work in what has been a demanding year.

Have a great weekend - let's hope there's some sun!

God Bless

Jo

Principal's Comment

Kia Ora Kevinians and Supporters of the College,

Thank you to those of you who attended the Senior Prizegiving last week. It was a wonderful night of celebration which showcased our students in all of their areas of strength, academic, cultural and sporting. Congratulations too to Fergus McMullan who was awarded our Dux of the College prize. I have spent some time today speaking with Fergus about the role of women in religion in the lead up to his scholarship exam on the topic. I think I can safely say what makes a Dux, apart from hard work, is an enquiring mind and the discipline to follow that through! Good luck Fergus!

One award I omitted to mention on the senior prize giving list was the Mana Pounamu scholarship won in the senior section by Oshyn Guthrie and the junior by Hannah Burke. The award is in recognition of the achievement of Māori students across a wide range of activities and carries significant weight. Both students were worthy winners and we look forward to seeing what they achieve in the future. The award is presented in Dunedin at the Otago University College of Education to students from around the region. We are very proud of these fine young women who have a variety of skills in sport and cultural activites.

This weekend I will be traveling to Auckland with Jimmy and Russell Dixon to catch up with our Alumni in the North. We will be presenting at the Rydges Hotel on Sunday 20th at 7pm. We are keen for anyone who is available to join us to hear where our future plans are taking us as we emerge into this new era. I will feature this event in the blog for next week.

Have a safe and happy week.

God Bless

Jo