Dear Parents and Caregivers 

Tēnā koutou i ngā whānau o Te Ipu Kura o Matāaho

Pōwhiri – Welcoming Our New Tumuaki (Principal)

We are so excited to be able to invite you all along to a very special event that will be taking place in week 9 of this term. ANI will be officially welcoming our new Tumuaki (Principal), Jason Pocock, with a Pōwhiri held in our multipurpose space. The pōwhiri will be held on Tuesday 12th September at 11.30am and we would absolutely love for our community to be a part of this. If you are interested in attending, please let us know by completing the form attached to our invitation here. We look forward to seeing you then and celebrating this momentous occasion with our whānau, kaiako and tamariki in our MPS!

AIMS Games Update

The excitement continues to grow amongst our 130 Ākonga who are heading down to the AIMS games next week. Final preparations have been underway this week and AIMS students are all kitted out with their hot pink ANI shirts – we are definitely going to be a force unable to be missed that’s for sure, despite the 22,000 people that we’ve heard will be visiting Tauranga over the 7 day period. Our tamariki have been working hard, practising and playing friendly games (and maybe a few unfriendly games against teachers here at school) in order to make sure they are putting their best feet forward. As we send them off, we wish them all the very best and know they will represent our school with pride, play hard – but play fair and look out for each other. Thank you for the huge effort from parents, managers and coaches to ensure this is a positive experience for each tamariki. Lets go ANI! Karawhiua!

Electives Week

With 130 students and 15 staff out to attend AIMS games, it has given us a bit of freedom and an amazing opportunity to change up our learning program for the remaining staff and students here at ANI for week 8. We will be running an elective program that will run over the week during our middle block. This week, students have chosen first, second and third preferred options from a list of about 20 different electives. These electives celebrate the different passions and strengths of our staff and students and range from arts and crafts (clay making, charms and pompom crafts), music (intro to writing music and musical theatre), culture (German, Japanese and Spanish), strategy games (chess, board and card games), physical fitness, mindfulness, geography, conversation club, learning more about and exploring our Maungawhau and even an elective that delves into the history and impact of Taylor Swift! Make sure to check in with your young people to hear all about their exciting learning.

Student Leadership

It is that time of the year again when we are blown away by the passion for leadership that our year 7 students show. Stage one is complete, round 1 applications are in and we are pouring through each application as we prepare the hefty logistical operation which will see 148 students participate in an interview. These interviews will take place before the end of term 3 and will be conducted as group interviews. The candidates will be interviewed in groups of 4-5 and interviewed by a staff member and a current student leader. On the last day of term, students will find out who has been shortlisted for round 2. We wish all candidates the very best of luck. At ANI, we inspire to learn today and lead tomorrow and this is clearly reflected in the strength of these applications. Here’s to 2024!

Being Principled Learners – Having Integrity – Being Strong Self Managers

At ANI we like to think that we help grow principled self-managers who have a strong sense of integrity. In fact, we pride ourselves on it. Being principled is one of our IB learner profiles, integrity is one of our school values and being able to manage ourselves falls into both the IB approaches to learning and the key competencies from our NZ Curriculum. We mention these 3 things because we have noticed a few areas starting to slip amongst our tamariki. We would appreciate it if parents could help support us by initiating a conversation with their young people. A few key reminders to include could be: 

• What is part of our uniform, and what is not
• Lateness to school and back to class after breaks
• Chewing gum 
• Device usage in and out of school

New MPS Bleaches

We are very lucky to have our new retractable seating that holds 150 + students as well as 300 new chairs in the MPS.  We have been using this seating for our enrollment tours and parent evening and you’ll get a chance to see them in action at our Pōwhiri in week 9 and our end-of-term assembly in week 10.  A huge thanks to Mandy Tomlins who was able to secure two grants for the seating in the MPS.

Overseas Trips

Wishing those students who are attending either Japan and Cairns a great experience and we hope you make some lifetime memories and friends while you are away.  We know you’ll have a fabulous time at each destination.

Ngā mihi nui

Shane Devery (Acting Principal), Kieran Gleeson (Acting Deputy Principal) and Ashley Triana (Acting Deputy Principal)