‘Nau mai, hoki mai ki te kura māori!’ The definition of ‘Māori’ in this sentence is ‘normal’ which makes sense if you picture Europeans settlers asking “What sort of people are you?” and the reply from Māori would be “Normal people, what sort of people are you?” 

‘Welcome back to normal school!’ It feels that way at least now with level one. No barriers on the court and a more ‘normal’ feel to schooling. We have kept a lot of the changes because in our opinion they are good hygiene practice anyway. 

One thing we have NOT changed YET is the bell times. We have so many children at St Anne’s now. We have filled our seven available classrooms  and only have limited space left. 

We have found with staggered morning tea, lunchtimes and end of the day that children;
-Have more space to eat on the seats
-Are not rushed when eating so are all eating more on average
-Have more space in the playground
-Duty staff know their children more as are on duty juniors for juniors and seniors for seniors

We reduced lunchtime to 50 minutes instead of an hour, this has;
-Reduced children coming in almost ‘overtired’ from running around
-Reduced boredom (not that we get that much of this due to so many lunchtime options)
-Students on average are happier

The ten minutes less has gone to the end of the day with school finishing at 2.50pm. Whilst the juniors have come out, the seniors have free time. They have done the same amount of learning as would usually occur. 

I would like to continue this for a bit longer to get enough data to know whether any permanent decisions should be made around this. It reminds me of the photo. If things work better in other ways, why aren’t we doing it? In saying that, let’s see how the next week or so goes. 

In the meantime, juniors are still 2.50pm and seniors 3pm.

Mā te Atua, koutou, e manaaki e tiaki a tēnei wiki!

Dallas Wichman