Wellington East Girls' College / Te Kura Kōhine o te Rāwhiti o Te Upoko o Te Ika

Welink

Rāwhiti Taukaea

Issue 3, Pipiri / June 2022

Welink is a newsletter produced as a link between Wellington East Girls' College and our community, and is emailed to parents and students. It contains essential information as well as news for caregivers. It is also on our website – www.wegc.school.nz. Please advise the school if you have changed your contact details, or would like to add an email address: wegc@wegc.school.nz

Principal's Message

Tēnā koutou kātoa

I am pleased to say that this term is shaping up to be a busy one. It is so exciting to be engaging in events and activities with students that build a sense of community. We have really missed these opportunities over the last two years with pandemic restrictions.

This week has been Gagana Samoa - Samoan Language Week and our Cultural Prefects- Beulah Foliaki and Mya Patel , Languages Learning Area, students and staff have hosted a range of events and activities to celebrate Pacific Culture in its many forms. It was a proud moment to see staff performing a Siva to the students in Assembly this week. As Beulah and Mya so aptly put it "E vave taunu'u le malaga pe a tatou alo va'a fa'atasi" which translates to "Our destiny is in sight when we paddle our canoe together".

As I mentioned in a previous WELINK our staff Professional Learning is focusing on further developing and growing our cultural competencies in our relationships with students and in our teaching and learning. This week the observation team from Poutama Pounamu will be observing all of our teachers in the classroom. The data from these observations and the surveys you completed will help determine the targeted learning that our staff will engage in to continue our journey of truly enacting the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in our relationships and in our teaching. I hope to continue to give you feedback on our progress with the programme.

Earlier in the term students were involved in Bullying Free NZ week. This was an opportunity to launch our education programme through Ako focusing on what is/is not bullying, stereotyping, where to go for help if you are experiencing bullying and being an upstander. It is through educating our students how to be with one another and living our school values that we will continue to build an inclusive and safe environment for all. We will also be offering an opportunity for parents to hear from experts around supporting your young person to be a good digital citizen, and will communicate details when they are finalised.

Ngā mihi nui

Gael Ashworth, Principal

Board of Trustees

Kia Ora Kōutou,

I was lucky enough to have half an hour recently, while I was waiting to go to a meeting at the college, to read some of the wonderful post-it messages that make up the large pink heart shape on the windows of the first floor in Matairangi. The messages, (I didn't count how many but they were well into the hundreds), were of thanks for the support and friendship that students at East give to one another. They described the simple little actions and deeds that students do for one another that help bring them together, support each other when things can be a bit hard and strengthen our community. Those messages and the support I saw for 'Speak up, Stand Together and Stop Bullying' Pink shirt day were very uplifting.

I've also been lucky enough to get to see some students playing some of their winter sports, and again it's impressive to see and hear the support that our students give each other even if the game isn't going their way. Keep it up!

Just quickly, it wouldn't be a message from me without a note about Board elections. Firstly, congratulations to our two newest Board members Josie and Anna and thank you to all the other parents that put their name forward. (Thanks also to Dee-Anne for running the election). A reminder to everyone that this September is the full Board election so, just as the students of East support one another, have a think about becoming a Trustee to support East.

Ngā mihi nui

Andrew Downes, Chair

WEGC Board By-election results

Declaration of Parent By-Election Results

Parent Representative Votes

AWAD, Adam 56
JELLIE, Anna 87
KANELLIS, Michelle 72
KING, Rewhia 70
NAFATALI, Josie 109
NORTH, Leaha 31
Invalid Votes 13

I hereby declare the following duly elected :

Anna Jellie

Josie Nafatali

Dee-Anne Herdman, Returning Officer

Please see the Student Calendar below for student events coming up

Wellington East Parents' Association (WEPA)

Kia ora

The role of WEPA is to distribute funds raised by the community through grants, fundraising and donations, back to WEGC students to support their extracurricular activities including sports, cultural and academic pursuits. We have, over the past year, arranged for flexible staging for the drama department, supported learning grants, and contributions towards the cost of getting our teams to national sporting competitions. We meet the second Wednesday of each month and anyone is welcome to join us.

We continue to need your support. Please make your donations to the school, a small part of that goes to WEPA, and shop at New World Wellington, and support our various sponsors. The income we get from all sources is so valued and it goes straight to our students.

As always, we welcome new members to the committee. Please get in touch via parents@wegc.govt.nz

Ngā mihi nui

WEPA committee

Dates for Year 9, 2023 Enrolment

We are accepting enrolments from beginning of Term 2 - (2 May 2022) - all enrolments are to be completed online

15 June 2022 - Open Evening starting at 4.00pm and 6.00pm. ‍
25 July 2022, All Year 9 applications (including Out of Zone applicants) to be received.‍
1 August 2022, Ballot held for out of zone Year 9 2023 places‍
4 August 2022, Parents of out of zone applicants to be notified of Year 9 ballot outcomes‍
18 August 2022, Deadline for Parents acceptance of Year 9 (out of zone) ballot places
16-25 August 2022 Enrolment meetings (to help with transition to college)

For planning purposes we request applications for students who live in our home zone, for entry into Year 9 in 2023, to be in the hands of WEGC Enrolment Officer by Monday 25 July 2022. This is not a deadline. In-zone applications can be accepted at any time by the enrolment officer.

Open Evening and School in Action Day - June 2022

For more information on these events and tickets go to this link : Open Evening

or see our Welink April 2022

Samoan Language Week

This year's theme for Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa - Samoa Language Week is Fa’aāuāu le Folauga i le Va’a o Tautai - Continue the Voyage with Competent Wayfinders of the Ocean. Our Cultural Prefects Beulah and Mya, along with our Samoan teacher Nadia have organised a special week :

Monday: Senior assembly in the morning included Samoan Language Week ceremony with a teacher Siva item, and lunch-time food stalls offering Chop suey, Panikeke, Vaifala, and Otai along with Samoan language students' wonderful performances

Tuesday: Junior assembly (Teacher Siva repeated), lunchtime Lollie Lei making

Wed: Moana film at lunchtime

Thursday: Samoan Language Day

You can view our Staff Siva at this link. The staff practiced the Siva last week so that they could present it to the students in the Senior and Junior Assemblies this week.

Readers and Writers Week - May 2022

Readers and Writers week 2022 (RAWW) saw our school come together to celebrate the East Library and inspire readers and writers of all abilities. We started the week with book folding art, which was a new type of craft for most of us. On Tuesday we held ‘blind date with a book’ where commonly overlooked books were wrapped in newspaper and given a new blurb. The best part about this was getting to pick out a book without the cliché of ‘judging by its cover’. We hope this becomes a regular RAWW event, as it gives students the chance to explore new genres and authors.

On Thursday we held the annual book quiz which had a fantastic turnout of both staff and students. As we finished off the week we announced the winners of our short story/poetry competition and our bookmark making competition. Emma Hoshino blew us away with her beautiful hand drawn bookmark, whilst Betsy Bond won our writing competition with her deeply moving short story ‘The Colour Purple’. You can read this below.

We also had our first book club meeting of the year, which is to be held fortnightly on Wednesdays at lunchtime. We run a non-traditional book club where we chat about any of the books we have been reading; we certainly don’t all read the same thing! Some weeks we might decide to read from a specific genre, as this is a great way to fall in love with a different genre.

We would like to give a huge thank you to all those who attended our RAWW events, and an even bigger thank you to our library TIC, Ms Borrett for being so supportive of us Library prefects. We look forward to encouraging reading in the WEGC community and making the most of our wonderful library for the year to come.

Haere rā,

Charlotte and Georgia

Library prefects

Short Story

The Colour Purple by Betsy Bond

It was just the two of you. Your house sat on a hill with its paint blistering like exposed skin. The greenery that surrounded the structure was mainly overgrown or deceased, and the blades of grass on your lawn that did grow knew their fate. They were destined to join the dark patches, leaving room for the weeds to grow. In some ways the old decrepit abode resembled your daughter and the empty shell of a girl you turned her into, with her heart in disarray, trusting that one day you'd patch up the cracks. The wicked words that forged from your throat would strangle her for years to come, their fingerprints still scattered across her neck. You would plead your case professing that your actions came from a place of love. But no love leaves bruises that blossom like hues of lavender. She would walk over to you as you started to cry, comforting you because she thought she was the one in the wrong.

Your daughter was unsure if your watering eyes were a product of guilt because of what you had done. Was it possible that you felt remorse? Or when you put your hands on her did you see yourself, your father doing the same to you. She would embrace you after what you had done, feeding your anger with compassion, because she knew it must have been her fault. She was a small mouse embracing a snake as its tail curled around her neck, slowly extracting every breath. She trusted you with her heart but you shattered it. Your fangs caused gashes sparing death, for you are not poisonous but merely ruinous. You ate her flesh and left an empty shell which you wrapped in cling film, but it only made it harder for her to breathe.

Her body was adorned with patches of skin that echoed stains of red wine. These were fabricated by the hands that she trusted with her own, a reflection of her mistakes, not yours. You made it your goal in life to let her be conscious of your dominance. To hurt her the way you always intended to. Nonetheless, she didn't ask to be your canvas, to be painted purple and blue as her young heart was plagued by your cruelty. In the wake of the pain and suffering, she is free of the fear you caused. Your daughter has reached a landscape on the path you put her on that blocks her from your view, and has taken her from your reach. But your words have left scars, and she remembers how young she was when you forced her to grow up, in that house that was never a home. You taught her to confuse love with violence, until she couldn't distinguish the two, so now she trusts men who hurt her, because they look so much like you.

Wanted ! Reader/writers needed to support our students

We still need a few more people who would be able to support throughout the year, during assessments and exams by reading questions, writing or typing answers and or supervising students. If you have some time available to help us please contact Bridget Dixon, Learning Support on bridget.dixon@wegc.school.nz for more information.

Music success

We have three out of the 6 finalists for the Shakespeare Globe Centre NZ/Morrison Music Trust Shakespeare Composition Competition. This is a competition to compose music either for use in a Shakespeare play or inspired by a Shakespeare play, and is open to secondary students nationally. The Supreme Winner receives a cash prize and also has the opportunity of attending SGCNZ’s National Shakespeare Schools Production as the Student Composer and is eligible for selection as a member of SGCNZ Young Shakespeare Company to represent NZ at the Globe

A huge congratulations to Year 12 Music students: Saffiya Johnson, Eden Leota and Hannah Young

The winners will be announced by Hon Grant Robertson at the Michael Fowler Centre in June.

Kia ora koutou,

The joke goes ‘how do you eat an elephant’? The answer of course is ‘one mouthful at a time’!

Achieving a Gold Duke of Edinburgh’s Award is a lot like eating an elephant (metaphorically speaking!) - it takes passion, perseverance and patience to keep taking small steps towards the end goal. That’s something our Te Aka students are good at. For the past three and a half years the students, along with a great crew of supporters, have been doing, learning, serving and adventuring along their Duke of Edinburgh’s Award journey and at the beginning of May nine students got another step closer by completing their Gold Adventure in the Abel Tasman National Park. It’s a celebration of success so please read on and enjoy the videos of the camp (with huge thanks to Lydia Hare for putting these together!)

Hope McDermott is the first Te Aka student to fully complete her DOE Gold Award, and for all students this was their Gold practice or qualifier camp. Congratulations Hope!

“We have all learned so much through our DoE journey - staff, parents and students. It is so exciting to see how independent the students have become and how they take on challenges. When we started I never dreamed we could get this far" Sue Perry

“My highlight from camp was roasting marshmallows, swimming at the beach and catching the water taxis. The challenging bit of camp was getting up to the Cleopatra pool water slide. My new thing was cooking dinner by myself without my parents.” Therese Lee

”A massive shout out to senior DOE students Maia Tuesse, Maeve O’Regan-Smith and Amber Cox who were amazing at supporting our students. They kept going and going and made the camp so awesome for everyone. AND... to Leonie King who made it all happen!!” Sue Perry

“The students have developed a love of the outdoors through experiencing tramping, rafting, canoeing, walking in the snow, rock climbing and camping. Not only are our students so much more confident and competent, their parents and teachers have also increased their perceptions of what these students are capable of. We are very proud of them”. Leonie King

Ka pai team.

Nga mihi nui

Deb Remacha

Pink Shirt Day 20 May 2022

This was held on Friday 20 May during Bullying-Free NZ Week. Staff wore pink and students wore non-uniform/ pink items to support the Pink Shirt Day initiative, which works to create schools, workplaces, communities and whānau where everyone feels safe, valued and respected.

Pink Shirt Day is led by the Mental Health Foundation with support from InsideOUT, the Peace Foundation, New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA), Te Kaha O Te Rangatahi Indigenous Youth Hub, the Human Rights Commission, Bullying-Free NZ Week, and the Cook Islands Development Agency.

Other events during the week here at WEGC were cupcake decorating, dance events and writing compliment cards to add to the compliment wall.

To round off the week, on Friday we also held the Wellington College vs Wellington East Girls' College netball game, a fun event for players and supporters

Pride Week 23-27 May 2022

Last week was the annual Pride Week and the school prefects arranged events and decorated the school. Our building lights were also set as a rainbow during the week to celebrate the event. We held the now annual Drag Show at lunchtime on Monday, along with Rainbow Chalk Art on Tuesday, a film on Wednesday, bracelet making and a non uniform day on Friday, with a school band comprising staff members also playing in the Quad at lunchtime. Our staff also posed for their annual rainbow photo on Wednesday.

If you would like to read more about rainbow history in Aotearoa, these links are a good place to start:

Queer History (National Library)
Pride.nz (Media archives)
LAGANZ (Lesbian & Gay Archives NZ)

Athletics Day 2.0

2022 was the year of WEGC’s first ever Athletics Day 2.0! Due to Covid and other challenges experienced throughout term 1, our adaptation of Athletics Day finally happened on Wednesday in the first week of term 2!

The day started with house meetings, then moved into a rotation of different exciting events including: banner painting, capture the flag, rob the nest, volleyball, and relays. The lunchtime carnival was awesome with a sausage sizzle, face painting and the famous fashion on the field. The afternoon kicked off with the anticipated chant off, shuttle runs and tug-o'-war.

We want to thank everyone that came and took part in all of the events. The house spirit was unreal and it was awesome to see so much fun, laughter, enthusiasm and whanaungatanga. It was such an enjoyable day!

A huge congratulations to Edger for taking out the win at this year's Athletics Day 2.0! There was also an amazing effort from Cooper, Tirikatene, and Sheppard, taking out the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th spots respectively.

Edger’s win wouldn’t have been possible without their amazing prefect Isabel Kurta, whose last house event it was. We want to say thanks to her for all the amazing work she put in. We will miss you for the rest of the year.

Finally a huge thanks to all of the HPE staff and WEPA who helped make it possible. We want to especially mention Miss Martin for all of her effort, it didn’t go unnoticed.

What we have been doing : Year 9 Dance and Drama

Year 9 Dance and Drama have recently been learning a 90’s dance routine in a unit of Dance through the Decades - including Spice Girls and the Macarena

Online course for parents/caregivers available : "Open and Honest"

Our junior sexuality and relationship units start in Term 3 and go through to the end of the year. There is a family planning online course/presentation which may be of interest to parents/caregivers called "Open and Honest for Parents and Caregivers".

https://www.familyplanning.org.nz/courses/course?id=147

This Zoom course includes:

How to create a positive and safe environment for talking about relationships and sexuality with young people
Current research and trends
Exploring personal values and attitudes towards sexuality
Barriers that prevent young people from enjoying positive relationships and sexual health
Practice responding to questions and tricky situations
Recommended resources, support agencies and organisations

It includes values exploration and aims to build comfort and confidence around this topic.

Sport news - Floorball NZ selection

We have had 4 students selected for The New Zealand U19 Women’s Floorball National and is playing in the World Championships in Poland from Aug-Sept. The team travels to Europe in August 2022 for a preparation week and will then play against Hungary, Canada and Italy within our pool games from 31st Aug – 4th Sept 2022

Anna Knackstedt, Libby Sexton, Isla Morgan, Kate Johnson, have been preparing for this for over a year and will be self funding their trip. There is a fundraising page set up for them. and there is more information about the event here

Sports at East

You can check out Instagram - @wegcsport - and Facebook page for WEGC Sport at www.facebook.com/wegcsport

You can find information on all sports offered at East - the link is here and is also on our school website.

Ways to help WEGC - Fundraising :

Entertainment Book

Please support Wellington East as we sell Entertainment memberships. We are fundraising to ensure that all East girls are able to access the same opportunities. 20% of your Membership purchase comes directly to us!

Receive fantastic savings while you eat, play and shop with Entertainment. Memberships are convenient and easy to use for you and your family over any 12 month period from activation.

There are three different types of memberships:-

· Single City Membership

· Multi City Membership – unlocks 21 cities in New Zealand and Australia

· Multi Plus Membership – double the savings of a multi city membership for two years

Get yours today online by clicking the below link!

https://www.entertainmentbook.co.nz/orderbooks/105u644

Thank you for your support

When you are shopping at Wellington City New World:Have your docket stamped at the time of purchase by a checkout Supervisor. Deposit your docket in the East drop box provided in the main entrance of New World. Duplicate receipts can be requested, at time of purchase, if the original is required. Every time you purchase products from New World Wellington City, they will pay the school 1.5% pa of the total $ sales value.

Welink Newsletter : Wellington East Girls' College, Austin Street, Mt Victoria 6011, Ph 385 8514, www.wegc.school.nz

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