Dear Parents & Whanau,

It was lovely to see all the students arrive in their weekend clothes. They certainly presented a colourful picture at school prayers this morning.

As you know, today’s Mufti Day is for the people of India, as they continue to battle COVID-19. Please keep them in your prayers.

The money generously given today will go to Caritas NZ who will donate the funds to Caritas India. Caritas is a Catholic organisation that supports people throughout the world who are experiencing poverty or are impacted by an extreme natural event.

The total amount collected this morning was $812.50 – an outstanding effort by our school community. Thank you for your contributions.

Please also keep Monsignor David in your prayers. He is on the road to recovery, which is great. He will be in hospital for a few weeks.

The medical professionals have asked that we do not visit as he needs his rest to assist his recovery. He has his fellow priests visiting and looking after him. Our way of supporting him is through prayer.

The Principal’s Message will cover the following topics:

• School Mass
• Music Time
• Board of Trustees
• School Fees Statements & Tax Receipts
• SKIDS Available Position
• Learning at St Joseph’s

Ka manaakitia e te Atua

Alister Bridgman

Principal

Our Term 2 School Mass is being held next Friday, May 21st in our church, beginning at 9:15am. All whanau are welcome to join us. 

This will be followed by morning tea in the Staff Room. We look forward to seeing you at Mass and morning tea.

On the 4th of May, HG1 went to our first music class. It was a new subject to learn at St Joseph’s and we were all extremely excited.

As we entered the classroom, there were cases which were yellow that were on the carpet. We silently sat down on the floor. In front of us was the music teacher, smiling at us.

“Welcome to Jellybeans music class. My name is Mr. Kim. Today we are going to learn how to make music in different ways.”

That is how we started learning to make music.

Mr Kim asked us to open the mysterious yellow cases. Excited, we opened the cases in a flash. Inside was what looked like a piano, but it wasn’t. It was a glockenspiel! Mr Kim handed us something that looked like a stick with a ball at the end of the stick to play the instrument.

After glockenspiel, he even told us that he can play the piano, recorder, guitar and more. Mr Kim played the recorder for us and even played the Super Mario tune. Soon afterwards, HG1’s music lesson was over and we couldn’t wait for our next music lesson.

By Hayley

Planning for our school’s future – you are invited to share your ideas

The Board of Trustees is developing a new School Charter and Strategic Plan. To help inform this process, we are looking to get your feedback and ideas on what you would like our school to look like as we plan for the next three to five years.

Early next week you will see a number of large boards appear around the school. We will be posting new questions on these boards every week or so and we invite you to share your ideas and feedback on each theme, based on what initiatives you would most like to see started, stopped or continued.

This week’s theme is ‘Wellbeing: For our students, staff and community”,

On the back of these boards, you will also be able to provide feedback on what attitudes, skills, capabilities, and knowledge you would like to see nutured and grown during a child’s time at St Joseph’s.

This is just the first step in the process, and we will be providing other opportunities for you to provide feedback, so please don’t worry if you are not able to make it into the school grounds over the next few weeks.

Your feedback matters so thank you in advance for sharing your ideas.

St Joseph’s Catholic School Takapuna Board of Trustees

As you’ll be aware, we recently launched a new @School App which we hope will enhance communication between the parents and school.

One of the features the App offers is the ability for parents to view and download their child’s school fee statements and tax receipts.

Previously these were either sent home with the children or emailed to the parent.

For future reference, if you wish to receive a statement or tax receipt, simply click on the “Accounts” icon on the main screen; which will then bring you to a field where you can download the account statement, download the tax receipt, or email the tax receipt (see screenshot below).

Please keep in mind the account statements will not be entirely up-to-date as presently we need to enter the deposits into our system manually, which happens several times each month (eventually our accounting system will be able to update the App more immediately).

If you require tax statements for previous years (other than 2020/2021) or for students who have left St Joseph’s, please email your request to secretary@sj.school.nz.

Thank you!

Positions Available – SKIDS After School Care Programme

SKIDS St Josephs Takapuna is seeking one or two Casual staff for our growing After
School Care Programme. Rosmini Students welcome!

The ideal candidates will have:

• (work) experience with primary school children
• are energetic, motivated and vigilant with plenty of enthusiasm
• have a cheerful and friendly disposition and a love of sport & physical activity
• are confident in leading and instructing children in a calm and friendly manner
• team players

He/she should be able to handle and oversee a group of at least 10 active children at a time.

Successful candidates will go through mandatory training and Police Check before starting.

Please send your CV to Elena Watson@: stjosephstakapuna@skids.co.nz