Kia ora Koutou

I really enjoyed the Canterbury Principal's Conference a couple of weeks ago. Lucy Hone and Steve Francis were the speakers, and both were very inspiring. Steve talked about work/life balance and strategies to help with these and Lucy focused on Resilience. Lucy is a prime example of showing a great deal of resilience after the tragedy she had in her life 3 years ago. Here are some key points I took away:

A resilient person can focus on what they can change.
Too much challenge causes anxiety. Too much skill and not enough challenge causes boredom.
The skills of wellbeing, resilience and character can all be taught (and learned).
People have activity strengths and character strengths
Identify yours and your child's character strengths on this website by taking the free survey - www.viacharacter.org
Character strengths are not traits, they are not fixed
Unwanted & unexpected change is often forced upon us, while we cannot control our life circumstances, we can control our response
Greater awareness and use of character strengths is associated with:
- Improved school performance (Quinlan, 2014)
- Engaged learning, increased happiness
- Enhanced class climate
- Greater odds of having higher wellbeing (Hone 2015)
- Improved physical health
- Greater goal achievement

The wellbeing of our students and staff is so important to me. It is critical that we teach our children how to be resilient and how to grow their character strengths. We will be integrating this more and more into our daily classroom programmes. If you would like to find out more, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Ngā mihi

Maree Lucas
Principal
P: 0 3 314 5857 E: principal@omihi.school.nz

Community Evening
The BOT welcome all school families, children and members of our community to come along to our Community Evening on Monday 18th September at 7pm. This is an opportunity to have a look around our school, hear about our goals for the future and socialise with the community. Tea/coffee and cake will be provided, so please RSVP to office@omihi.school.nz or 314 5857 for catering purposes.

Fundraising for 2018
The fundraising committee met last week to work out our fundraising for the next year. We have some exciting things coming up and have tried to make it as easy as possible for parents and our community to be involved if they want to, without taking up too much of their time. We know how busy parents are these days. We are planning on two events a year, so once these are confirmed we will inform you. In the mean time we are organising a 'Givealittle Raffle'. This is a chance for people to buy a 'raffle ticket' from all over the world for $10 each. We will advertise it in our newsletter and Facebook page and ask our families to share the post on their own Facebook. What we need help with is finding prizes for the raffle. If you have anything that you would like to donate or know of any businesses that may be able to support us, please get in touch with me - principal@omihi.school.nz by the end of the term.

Speeches and Inquiries
Our seniors are currently working on a speech of their choice and the whole school are working on their own inquiries around Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. We will be sharing our inquiries and our speech finalists with the community on Wednesday 27th September at 2.00pm. We welcome you to come in and see our learning.

Three Way Learning Conferences
A reminder to book in for your three way learning conference on the Google Sheet. Let me know if you need me to send it to you again.

Ski trip
It's our second ski trip tomorrow, I'm looking forward to seeing all of our children extend their learning and skills since our last ski trip.

Old Crockery
We are looking at completing the lizard mosaic in our garden and would like donations of any old crockery. If you have any please let us know or bring it down to the container at school.

Elections
Omihi School will be a voting place for the coming elections on Saturday 23rd September.

Newsletter Monday 4th September, 2017