Term three is always an exciting and tiring time at WHS when not a week seems to pass without some quite monumental happenings. This term started with another successful Blank Canvas exhibition with lots of wonderful pieces of Art displayed and sold! Winter sports ended and some teams travelled to Winter Tournament week. Then we […]
Category: Principal’s Message
In his Principal’s message for the end of Term 2, Dominic asks ChatGPT to outline the benefits and challenges for future education in an AI world.
I spent time over the last week at a Principal’s conference in New Plymouth. One of the keynote speakers, Yong Zhao, Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Kansas, talked to us about what he saw as the future of education in the age of ‘smart machines’. Yong talked about his humble beginnings, honestly […]
Kia ora koutou I mentioned to students in year 12 and 13 at assembly a few days ago that this point of the year is a bit of a reality check for each individual. Are things going as planned, and if not what changes are they going to make? There is still a lot of […]
It was lovely to welcome about 450 new students to our kura at the start of the year. At the powhiri I spoke about attendance and connection. Students know that these are recurring themes of mine and this is because I spend a fair amount of time looking at data that highlights the importance of […]
I spoke to a parent at cricket a couple of weeks ago and he remarked on all the teacher-only days that have occurred this year. That has probably been an irritation for many parents but these were days agreed to by the ministry to help us with preparation for a new NCEA to be implemented […]
We are more than halfway through the final term for the year. Some of our seniors have left us already and some are involved in NCEA examinations. Traditionally when our seniors leave we have run a senior prizegiving for our years 11 to 13 which is normally quite a long affair but a chance to […]
Tēnā koutou katoa, I would to take this opportunity to introduce the new board members who took their positions at the meeting on Monday 22 August. As we had 5 members of the school community put their names forward, there was no need to have an election and they were able to take up the […]
Last year at this time I mentioned how tired staff and students were and the need for the break. This year I really want to pay tribute to our staff who have been consistently going above and beyond to keep things running at school as normally as possible. There has been a great, extra burden […]
I attended a Principal’s conference in Queenstown earlier this week. There were strong themes of decolonising and re-indigenising our curriculum with Professor Mere Berryman’s keynote presenting a powerful examination and, at times horrific history, of education in New Zealand. In approaching this, Professor Berryman quoted Moana Jackson who said that “… to understand how to […]