Tēnā koutou e āku manuhiri, tēnā koutou ngā whānau whānui o te kura, ka nui te mihi ki a koutou

Transcription

1 Gregor Fountain s 2013 Paraparaumu College Prize-giving Speech Tihē mauri ora! Tihē uriuri, tihē nakonako Tihē ki te Wai-taki-hua-o-Kupe Tihē mauri ora! E te manuhiri tūārangi, nau mai, haere mai! E ngā tini mate o runga i a koutou, haere; Takahia te ara takitini! Takahia te ara takimano! Takahia te ara ki Hawaiki-nui, ki Hawaiki-roa, ki Hawaiki-pāmamao, ki Te Hono-i-wairua. E ngā mate katoa haere, haere, haere! Āpiti hono tātai hono, te hunga mate ki te hunga mate; Āpiti hono tātai hono, te hunga ora ki te hunga ora. Tātou te hunga ora tēnā tātou katoa. Tēnā koutou e āku manuhiri, tēnā koutou ngā whānau whānui o te kura, ka nui te mihi ki a koutou He mihi manahau ki a koutou te whānau whānui o te Kāreti o Paraparaumu Koutou ngā kaiwhakaako, koutou ngā kaimahi, koutou ngā kaitautoko, koutou te iwi kāinga. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa. Introduction The Honourable Nathan Guy - Member of Parliament for Otaki, Mr Mike Cardiff - Kapiti District Council Deputy Mayor, Paraparaumu College Kaumatua Tuki Takiwa and whaea Pauline Takiwa, Paraparaumu College Board Chair Rachel Bruce, Board members, distinguished guests, whanau and parents, all staff and most importantly the students of Paraparaumu College, it gives me great pleasure to address you at this, the 37 th Prize-giving at Paraparaumu College, and my first as Principal. I am delighted to do so in this space, our community gym, where we have been meeting for whole-school assemblies throughout the year to celebrate student success. Good Learner When I went to secondary school in the 1980s, A Good Learner was a student who listened carefully to his or her teachers, completed the largely individual tasks that he or she was set and committed the learned information to memory so that it could be recalled and used in the end of year examinations.

2 But what makes a Good Learner in the digital age, in the age of the internet when teachers no longer control all of the information, with learners having constant access to information online? As a school community in 2013, we have been grappling with this question. One result of the conversations which we have had is the Paraparaumu College Good Learner Profile. We have already used the Good Learner Profile as the centrepiece of our e-learning strategy and as our starting point as we develop Te Ako Patuia our new Good Learner partnership with Paraparaumu College whanau which focuses on Maori learners. We are now in the process of developing a new Strategic Plan which will support us in our on-going work to grow good learners and personalise learning around their needs. Without exception, the Good Learner discussions underlined to me that as a community, we value critical thinking. It is crucial that a strong emphasis is placed on learners evaluating the quality of the information which they are accessing. Who provided this information? What were their motives? How does it compare with other information both online and in books and how does it sit with what we already know about this topic? The questions which our learners are asked at school should be ungoogleable and encourage learners to be innovative and creative, applying ideas to new settings instead of simply cutting and pasting other people s information. It is also crucial that our learners are Collaborative. We must ensure that the approaches which we take encourage learners to interact face-to-face, to debate, discuss and work alongside each other. A serious danger in the digital age is that the screen becomes a barrier to human interaction. At Paraparaumu College we are committed to approaches to teaching and learning through which students develop the skills required to relate to others. Another attribute of a Good Learner which was emphasised throughout the consultation meetings was Focus. As a community, we want our learners to be given very clear guidelines about what is expected. It s not simply a case of surfing the net, but using the internet for a very clear purpose with specific websites and tools identified as being useful for particular tasks and topics. Clear classroom and task expectations lead to student engagement and achievement. While teachers set the tone for classroom interactions and behaviour, our community places high value of our learners being self-managing. The autonomy which is a bi-product of the digital age must be accompanied with strategies for students managing their time, their resources and their information.

3 Finally, and perhaps underpinning the rest of the attributes of a Good Learner, is integrity one of our five College values. Good learners develop and use a strong moral compass which guides their online and offline behaviour and interactions. As a community of learners we need to help each other to be ethical and safe citizens. Five Personal Highlights I wish to highlight five areas of achievement or events at Paraparaumu College in 2013 which illustrate the good learning which takes place here. NZ Scholarship Results In February, we received the results from the 2012 New Zealand Scholarship Awards. These awards are reserved for the top 2½ per cent of Year 13 students in New Zealand based on demanding external examinations and in some cases external assessment of portfolio or performance work. Ten of our 2012 students gained these awards in a range of subjects. Of these two were at outstanding level, placing Samantha Coombes & Joseph Englert in the top 0.3 per cent of students in their disciplines nationally. These results indicate that Paraparaumu College provides the curriculum and teaching which enables students to perform at the highest possible level. We operate in a media environment in which school quality is sometimes judged on crude pass/fail statistics. While we desire all our students to gain their NCEA certificates, we must ensure that ambitious goals beyond simply passing continue to be set so that students learn and achieve to the highest possible level. We wish this year s scholarship and NCEA candidates well over the next few weeks, and we look forward to celebrating your success early next year. PE Department Outstanding Department Award My second highlight was attending the 2013 Physical Education New Zealand Awards Ceremony, to witness Paraparaumu College win the Outstanding Physical Education Department Award. The adjudicators commented on the extraordinary leadership which members of this Department have shown in developing innovative teaching practices. They also recognised the Department for their willingness to share their ideas and approaches with colleagues in other departments at Paraparaumu College and with people in other schools. As well as developing fitness and skills, there is a major focus in the Physical Education Department on using digital technology as a tool for personalising learning and developing students critical thinking. Congratulations to the teachers and students in the Health and Physical Education learning area for the recognition they have received this year. Relay for Life My third good learner highlight is the 2013 Relay for Life, which took place at the Paraparaumu Domain in March. The focus of this event was the raising of money to fund medical research into cancer treatment. Our involvement in this event was completely student-led and the event itself was a wonderful celebration of life as

4 students, staff, parents and the Paraparaumu College mascot continuously lapped the Domain for the 24 hours of the relay. The significance of the cause was underlined by our awareness of specific members of our Paraparaumu College community, including staff, students and parents who have been fighting cancer this year. Our participation reminded me that good learners do not learn skills, knowledge and values simply to pass their exams, but so that we can serve and help others in our community and our world. We look forward to enhancing our involvement in the 2014 Relay for Life. My hope is that with the introduction of four school houses, we might have four Paraparaumu College Relay For Life teams circling the Domain in February next year. Zeussical Term Two s Zeussical Production is my fourth good learner highlight from This memorable and fun musical, which appealed to all ages, continued the remarkable tradition of achievement which Paraparaumu College has had in the performing arts since its inception. Like all good learners, the Zeussical cast, crew and staff had some rocky moments throughout the learning process. There were crises of confidence and doubts about the performance on the way. But as lines and music were learned and the opening night neared, the learning translated into a remarkable combined performance which exceeded all expectations. Congratulations to all the students, staff and parents who worked together to produce such a wonderful show, which my 4 year old son still talks about four months later. AMI Round the Bays It is hard to identify just one sporting event as my final good learner highlight. At last week s sports awards dinner we celebrated remarkable success in golf, where our senior team won every possible title in Wellington and then represented the greater Wellington region in the national championships in Christchurch; in netball, where our Senior Premier Girls won the Premier Women s title for the Kapiti Coast; and in Hockey, where our Girls First XI were placed third in the whole of Wellington, the Kapiti Coast and Wairarapa. Additionally over last weekend, our Girls 7s Rugby team qualified for the national championships in Auckland. Paraparaumu College has students who represent New Zealand in basketball, AFL, touch and in-line hockey. We have internationally ranked athletes in wrestling, speed skating, mountain-biking, karate and BMX racing. But my fifth good learner highlight was February s AMI Wellington Round-the-Bays. As part of their assessment programme, our Year 12 Physical Education students competed in this event together. In doing so, they won the overall schools title, beating every other school, both co-ed and single-sex, in the Greater Wellington region. One student, Liam Chapman, was feeling a little off-colour during the event, even though he completed the 7 kilometre course in a little over 35 minutes. Liam later discovered that he had competed in the Round the Bays (and the school athletics championships) with leukaemia. Liam s tenacity, calm demeanour and courage through his treatment, which culminated in a

5 bone-marrow transplant at Starship Hospital in September, have been an inspiration to us all. I am delighted to report that Liam has now returned home and is making great progress. We wish him all the best for his continued recovery and look forward to his return to Year 13 at Paraparaumu College in Staff Changes Several staff members will be leaving Paraparaumu College at the end of From our permanent staff team, Regan Carroll is moving to continue her English teaching career in Melbourne; Languages teacher Taryn Wilson is returning to her home town of Tauranga. Erika Rhodes has resigned from her position teaching Information Technology. In 2014 she will be teaching at Horowhenua College. We thank these teachers for their contribution to Paraparaumu College over the past few years and wish them well as their careers continue in other schools. Shirley Sowry also leaves Paraparaumu College at the end of 2013, having taught social sciences, tourism and Commerce here since We are so grateful for all the work which Shirley has done in the classroom, in support of her colleagues and in the extra-curricular life of the College. Shirley has been instrumental in the growth and development of hockey at Paraparaumu College. Thank you Shirley for the hours you have devoted to Paraparaumu College students over the past fifteen years. We will also farewell Kim Kelly from the staff at the end of this year. Kim has been teaching English at Paraparaumu College, either in a full-time or part-time capacity since A particular strength of Kim s work has been working to integrate learning from different curriculum areas. This will serve her well as she takes up a position teaching Year 7 and 8 students at Kenakena School. We have been fortunate to have some great teachers with us in 2013 in fixed or long-term relieving capacities. We hope that some of you may be returning in 2014, but I wish to take this opportunity to acknowledge Katie McQuaid,Lisa Missen, Denise Milne, Gemma Legg, Amy Stevens, Yvette Howe, Ryan Westgate and Sylvia Hill. Thank you for your great work this year. As a school community we were rocked in Term Three by the death of teacher, Dean and colleague, Julie Laurenson. Julie had resigned from her permanent position at Paraparaumu College but had continued relief teaching throughout her illness. I didn t know Julie well, but the tributes which I heard at her funeral, in our staffroom and in the student centre and playground spoke volumes of her care for students and colleagues, her positivity and fun. She embodied the qualities of the Good Learner. She loved Paraparaumu College and Paraparaumu College loved her. She is greatly missed.

6 Appreciation My first year as a Principal has been demanding. I wish to specifically acknowledge Rachel and the Board for their vision and guidance and my Senior Leadership Team colleagues, Sharon Gilman, Andrea Stonehouse, Cliff van Schooten and Chrissie Jorgensen for their initiative, support and ideas. Our Executive Officer and Board Secretary, Kathryn Lynskey is a remarkable source of information, wisdom and expertise. I feel very fortunate to be starting as a Principal with Kathryn in my team. Cathy Lawry, the Principal s Personal Assistant at Paraparaumu College has done an extraordinary job of guiding me through my first year, managing my diary and correspondence on top of all the other things she does at Paraparaumu College. It is extraordinary how hard she works all day, every day. Thanks Cathy. Farewell to Graduating Students Today we farewell our Year 13 students. Some of you have been part of the Head Student team, others have been facilitators and prefects, all of you have shown leadership and will have learned from the opportunities and experiences this year. You came to us in At your Graduation, I suggested that in most cases you were then smaller than your teachers and looked to your teachers for the answers. This year you have worked alongside your teachers to find solutions. You leave us with a greater sense of who you are, what you can achieve and how to do it. You understand about communication, collaboration and compromise. You have an understanding of the kind of commitment it takes to achieve excellence and the skills to make it happen. Remember the rewards of participation, the value of getting involved. Particularly, remember what it feels like to take part in something bigger than yourselves for the good of others. Keep making that happen and we will be extremely proud of you. We thank you for your contribution to Paraparaumu College. Prize Winners Congratulations to our prize winners. These are significant achievements. They represent serious commitment to learning, leadership and to community. We acknowledge your perseverance, intellectual gifts, talents and your generosity of spirit. Conclusion I wish to close by sharing with you a tongi drawn together from two whakatauki specifically for Paraparaumu College s Good Learner project by our Board member, Leah Gifford and her partner, Paul Meredith It uses the metaphor of the waka to describe the journey we are on together in our learning. It refers to Te Toki o te matauranga or the adze of knowledge which we use to shape our waka and prepare it for the learning journey ahead.

7 He waka eke noa Kia eke panuku te tauira Kia eke tangaroa te kura Whano, whano Haramai te toki o te matauranga. Haumi e, hui e Taiki e!