Welcome back.

We have a very busy few weeks ahead:

A significant number of you will have attended Parent Teacher Interviews yesterday. We had 1205 bookings made by approximately 400 parents. At the same point in 2017 we had 830 bookings. Successful students have the support of whanau and attendance at these hui is one way you can be actively involved in your son’s or daughter’s journey through secondary school.

Open Evening for our 2019 Year 9 cohort takes place on Thursday, 2 August between 6pm and 8pm. Tours of the school occur between 6.00 -7.30pm followed by the Principals address at 7:30pm.

Open Day is on Friday, 3 August between 10am and 1.30pm. This is an opportunity for parents and students to come and see our school in action during a normal school day.

The following week is Enrolment Week (Week 3.) Enrolments occur after school between 3:30pm and 6:30pm on Monday, 6 August through to Thursday, 9 August .  The school is also open for enrolments on Saturday, 11 August between 9.30am and 11.30am in the Information Commons.

The Option Selection process for 2019 course choices for all current students commences on Monday, 13 August. Whanau will have the opportunity to talk with teachers on the evening of Thursday, 16 August to discuss possible option choices with your child.

Rutherford week culminating with the 56^th annual Rutherford Day on Friday, 24 August.

Consultation Process

As we look toward planning for 2019 we wish to gain community voice. The importance of hearing the good and the not so good helps us to make decisions about what to keep and what needs to be refined or replaced.

The consultation process will have the following schedule.

• Wednesday, 8 August – Pasifika Information Sharing evening.
• Wednesday, 22 August – Maori Information Sharing evening.
• In the week beginning 10 September we will be asking for the community to complete our annual survey. This survey, which now in its fourth year will be published in a similar format and is helping provide longitudinal data.
• Results of the survey will be fed back to the community.
• The next phase will be to invite all whanau in for a wider consultation evening to discuss the findings and to have an information sharing hui regarding the direction and future priorities for Rutherford College. (The dates for the last two parts of the process are still to be confirmed.)
• The final part of the process is the information that we will be gathering directly from our students.

ENERGY FLOWS WHERE ATTENTION GOES

The following is the reminder given to staff for the start of Term 3.

Remember to invest some time at the start of each term to re-establish meaningful and authentic relationships. This requires focus on the moment, one thoughtful meaningful conversation at a time.

As teachers we get to set the mood or climate within our learning environment. We role model kindness, care and courtesy. We do this by being calm, fair and explicit; we then back this up by being consistent, insistent and persistent.

When we add in organised and prepared, we have taken care of the must and should do’s. Our integrity and brand image with our students is built on these simple foundations.

These must and should do’s, support the creation of a state of relaxed vigilance and from there we can find the teachable moments or serendipitous interventions which are the could do’s. Teachable moments and serendipitous interventions can only happen when the must and should do’s as building blocks are well established.

What’s Important Now (for our students in Years 11-13)

At the start of next week, Monday 30 July there are 37 teaching days until senior assessment week. By this stage of the academic year all internal assessments should be finished or very close to being completed.