Principal's Message

It has been great to see so many of our whānau, parents, friends of the school and ex-students, at school recently for various events – our formal sports and cultural blues evening, the cultural awards, sports awards, whānau hui, board strategic workshop, enrolment meetings and the list goes on! Although the school calendar is full and there is plenty of preparation required for these events, the air of positivity and celebration is palpable. We have celebrated so many of our young people in the last couple of weeks and this will continue next week with our senior prizegiving and our final full school assembly when we farewell our leavers, send our senior students off to external exams with our best wishes, and thank our head student team for their commiment and service during the year.

On Tuesday, the students will take the opportunty to farewell Mrs Liz Cameron after many years as Guidance Counsellor. Liz has touched many student and staff lives while at Trinity and she will be greatly missed. Personally, I have truly appreciated Liz’s contribution to the senior leadership team while she has guided us and the rest of the staff through a pastoral system review in the last couple of years. I will miss the laughter and wisdom she has brought to our meeting table! Liz will be here until the end of the year. No doubt we will still see her from time to time next year once the novelty of retirement has worn off!

The student body will also farewell Whaea Maya Tate-Manning who has taught Te Reo and mentored the kapahaka group, Te Whetū Tīrama, during the last four years. Maya has taught the staff and I much about tikanga and te reo, and she has always given much more than her part time position called for. Thank you for your guidance, Maya.

It was a privilege to listen to our prospective head students speak today, when they delivered their speeches to the senior year levels, as one part of the Head Student selection process. Every one was impressive. Every one of them showed pride in our college and a true sense of wanting to give back and serve their peers. It is courageous to put oneself out there so publically in this way, and I know that the interview process on Friday is going to be very challenging this year! The head student team will be announced at the assembly on Tuesday. After listening to these speeches I accompanied the Head Students of 2023 to the Dunedin South Rotary Club meeting, where they also delivered speeches reflecting upon their time at school, as it quickly comes to a close and they head off to university. It was quite an odd experience for me to be part of both lots of reflections on the same day – very much a finish and farewell to 2023 and an exciting start and the promise that 2024 holds. We have wonderful students here – I am confident they will make a difference in the world!

“Gracious and caring God, our source of light, we ask for your almighty hand to be upon these wonderful students as we send them forward. With their secondary school education now complete, may they continue to strive towards being the best version of themselves in all they do.”