Welcome back! It's school as usual following the events of February 22 that rocked our city.

Spreydon re-opened this morning with our wonderful students and families managing to keep things as normal as possible. For a few Spreydon was a new school as families moved here. We also have some new five year olds and we have made contact with all our families from last month.

You will be pleased to know the school is safe. We have had two engineering visits and respective reports prepared and our essential systems appear to be functioning satisfactorily. We have identified some areas of concern and we have cordoned these off as we inspect further, repair or take apart. For some items we have had to make changes. As an example our water supply has been under considerable pressure. We have asked all students to bring their own drinking water. Today we arranged a back up supply and we have four water monitors who will ensure we have water around all the classrooms on a daily basis. We get our water through the generous support of Aakland Chemicals here in Wigram. The school has purchased water and jerry cans while we also received water from ENZAFOODS New Zealand Limited, via transport from Nelson.

Many members of the school community have been in contact with the school and it is humbling to receive so many offers of support and encouragement. If you are in the Spreydon community a useful task might be to ring your neighbours and ensure they know Spreydon is open.

We are postponing our school camp. More details will be issued later.

On reflection, the staff fcompleted an amazing job on the afternoon of the earthquake. Our students were organised in classes outside. Parents werre met in an orderly manner and the needs of the individual students were managed. I am aware that many staff had their own families and homes to take care of, yet without exception, they stayed here to ensure the safety of our students before attending to their own concerns. What a fabulous team effort.

I trust you and yours remain safe and well. In the next few days we will run hot drinks in the school hall for families returning to the school. I invite any parents of our students to join us here as they settle children back into the 'normal' routines.

If these earthquakes teach us anything it is to have a plan for our family, no matter what the emergency.

Stay safe.

Summer is finally here and this week our students have enjoyed our school pool finally opening for the 2010/2011 summer season.

Our pool is a great asset to the school and has a history going back to 1904. About this time local residents expressed their concern to authorities about chldren having to swim in the local Heathcote river downstreet from the Sunnyside hospital The health risks were very obvious. After many meetings it was agreed to build a swimming pool on the school site.

Successive school committees and parent groups maintained the pool and ensured it was used effectively. At one stage the pool had a diving board with a significantly deeper, diving end. Changing sheds and pool surrounds were all projects undertaken by the community for the development of this area.

In 1999 the school completed an upgrade of the filtration plant and we included additional capacity for the growing roll.

Today it is interesting to see the increased emphasis being placed upon water safety and swimming instruction. Hopefully the next step might include the provision for school pools to be covered [or housed indoors]. The increase in the length of the swimming season, especially here in the South Island, will be a small step towards improving students proficiency in and near the water.

Our other main event this week has been the highly successful market day. Well done to the senior school for their organisation of the event. As in previous years, all the proceeds are used to support the school camp planned for the following year.

Events at the school in the first days of this week have been dominated by the earthquake on Tuesday. These continuing shocks are a good reminder, should we ever need it, of some fundamental beliefs of our school. These are:
1 We are all here for the children and their wellbeing is important. Keeping the school routines going and having 'normal' life continuing is part of our approach to managing the stresses and strains caused by these earthquakes.
2 Yes it is fine to ring the office and check if your child or family are safe. It may become hard to get through sometimes, however we will try to get to every caller. We will also try to update our set messages when we can. It does help us if you understand we can be flooding with calls sometimes. It also helps if you can hold off your call into the school.
3 Yes, you can come down to the school to make contact with your kids! [Please come past the office first just so we know who is where in the school].
4 Yes, you can come into the classrooms to see them [as above, just so we know who is in the school].
5 Yes, of course you can take your children out of school.
6 Yes, we check our buildings regularly to make sure they are safe.
7 Yes, the children appear very happy to be among their friends here at the school.
8 Yes, if anything happens we will do everything in our power to ensure the children are safe and we will not send them home if there is a possibility of further risk.
and finally yes, difficult but true,
8 The children watch us to see how we are managing and often copy our reactions. If we show fear and panic, they will be less likely to manage any situation with ease. If we appear calm and controlled they are more likely to be comfortable and able to handle the events. So yes, one of our roles here at the school is to remain as calm as we possibly can be and to ensure this is visible to the children.

Being an adult at times like this can be difficult. We have to put on a brave front for the children. We need to be aware that talking about our fears and concerns in front of children can be counterproductive. Often it may be necessary to do this out of their hearing. We also need to understand that fear and panic are two emotions that are easily transferred to others.

When we finally get over this testing period no doubt we can look back and say 'remember when..' or 'I was there when..' We have to be certain we are building our kids for tomorrow. It might help if we focus on that.

Welcome back to the new term.

In my visits to the classrooms this morning I was pleased to see the children so clearly happy to be back in the familiar surroundings of their classroom.
An extra surprise today has been the Ranfurly Shiled making a special visit to Room 3. It's great to see things are returning to their rightful place!
Our children have a busy term with the music festival next week and our choir children perform on Thursday.

Other events coming up include: tennis coaching, athletics, digital kids, our PTA disco, market day, orientation for Intermediate and our cycle safety. The dates and more specific details about these events will be included in our newsletters nearer the time of each event. Enjoy the term and roll on the summer!

We've come to the end of another school term. Our students have done so well. The earthquake appears as a distant memory, the smiles are back on faces and as always, the energy levels are at maximum.

During the week I had the good fortune to watch our netball girls competing in the Canterbury Champs. Well done girls, you are a credit to the school, your coaches, your parents and yourselves. The thing that stood out for me beyond the great court work was your obvious enthusiasm and enjoyment for the occasion.

Today at our Duffy assembly we hosted Jo Holley, a television presenter from Auckland. Jo reminded the children of the need to read and also provided several 'feet in the mud' techniques for public speaking. Thanks Jo, we trust the visit wasn't too earth shaking.

We will take a short break now. I know our staff have completed a busy term and after the events of this month the timing for them is very fortuitous. My thanks everyone for your solid efforts, enjoy your break.

I wish everyone in our scchool community a stress free and enjoyable break, see you all after Monday 11 October.

Welcome back to school. The events over the last week have been a challenge to many of us and it is pleasing to see so many happy children returning to school today. During the day I have managed to visit all of our classrooms. I have been impressed with the way the children have settled back into their work and they appear eager to get on with their routines. School really is a cool, secure place! Earlier today we provided a canteen in our hall where hot drinks and morning tea where available for any members of the community and parents who wished to stay on site. We are in the fortunate position of having no damage at the school and we managed to get our telephone message and website information updated fairly promptly. In addition the school received a host of offers of support and services. We are extremely grateful for these offers and we feel humbled that people can think of us at a time when others are so needy. Thank you. I would also like to acknowledge and offer my personal thanks to everyone in our team here who contributed to the smooth running during the local emergency. Our theme for the remainder of this term is very definitely Spreydon; we rock, we roll and we recover - with pride!

Once again our students have perfomed with distinction. Earlier last month a team of six represented Spreydon at the Literacy quiz. Only a few points separated the top teams and we managed a very creditable fourth placing. I watched our pupils during the night and their concentration and well controlled behaviour never faltered. Well done our literacy quiz team! Our thanks also to the team of parents who offered their support on the night and to our hard working staff. I know the staff members are very relieved to pass on the rather thankless organisation burden to others. In my experience, and speaking to these staff members, this organisational hard work is too often overlooked. A hearty thank you for all your efforts on behalf of all the competitors in this effort.

Today we had a crazy dress day. Some of our pupils [and the staff] are amazing. We had everything from coloured hair, jump suits through to ballerina costumes. It is always refreshing to have something as colourful as a dress up day, today was no exception. I believe we enjoy the dress up even more because we have such a strong ethic associated with our school uniform and the pride we have in wearing them.