A Message from our Principal

Kia ora e te whānau

‘Relationships’ is a word well-known and well-used in the education profession. It has been long held up as the most important factor in a successful classroom. We know that a strong sense of belonging and identity, along with feeling seen and valued, is a strong contributor to academic and personal success. I hope the adage ‘learners don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care’ is still one of the strongest takeaways from initial teacher education.

We talked about character and relationships on year 13 retreat last week. Your character is what sets you apart and what people remember about you. Often the accolades and the awards fade over time, but nobody ever forgets the person that you were to others. I am sure that, like me, when you run into people from a past life or from school days, the feelings that they evoke in you is the first thing that happens – those people you would prefer to avoid due to the way they treated you in the past, or those who still make you feel valued and important in their day. For our year 13s, they are spending their last year of school together and they want to ensure they have a year of fun, unity, personal growth, stronger relationships, and actions that impact other year groups, so they leave the school a better place because they were part of it. As I reminded them, being people of authenticity and integrity is what people will remember and will keep their relationships with one another strong well beyond school.

Last weekend, some of our head student group had the opportunity to build connections further afield with other student leadership groups from St Peter’s College, Auckland, Liston College, Auckland, St Thomas of Canterbury College, Christchurch and St Kevin’s College, Ōamaru, through the Edmund Rice Network. Thank you to Amelia Bresanello and the DRS’s from the other colleges who spent the weekend with this wonderful group of young people, helping them to reflect on servant leadership skills for the year ahead.

Further to our conections with the Edmund Rice community, we will host a group from EREA (Edmund Rice Education Australia) in a couple of weeks at Trinity. We are pleased to have this continued connection through our Edmund Rice charism and we look forward to showing them all the great things happening at Trinity.

I had my own special ‘relationships and connections’ moment recently celebrating our son’s wedding. The rather large (!) guestlist included friends on both sides from playgroup, primary school, secondary school and university. Knowing that those strong relationships have lasted for nearly 30 years with such a wide range of friends now living across the world is testament to the power of relationship, authenticity and integrity. Our young people are so good at this! Let’s encourage and pray for them, that they value the relationships they have with one another because this is what will get them through the tough stuff in life.

Warm regards,

Kate Nicholson

Principal