A little love can go a long way it seems – all around Waimuku for starters!

Westlake Girls High School student Tahara-Jayne (TJ) Rusden Rowley (Year 11) has brightened the lives of people in her neighbourhood after she hand-made 300 origami hearts, wrote messages on them, and delivered them around her community. So what inspired her to perform this act of kindness?

“We had a power outage at my house after a car went into a power pole right at the start of lockdown – and since I had no power to do anything I decided to learn how to make origami hearts,” she says. “On the first night, I stayed up with a candle and made about 30 – so then I decided to make it into a project and give them to all my neighbours around where I live.”

It took TJ around three weeks to make the hearts and write an encouraging message on each of them.  “The hardest part was having to glue all the flaps down and getting glue all over my hands,” she says.

Delivering the hearts into letterboxes turned into a two-hour daily dose of exercise. “All the houses are very far apart because I live in the middle of nowhere – as I call it. It took me three days to deliver them all, but I did it on my new bike I got for Xmas, so it was fun.”

Because the hearts were delivered to letterboxes, TJ didn’t get to see people’s reactions. It wasn’t until someone posted on the local Facebook page, that TJ knew she’d brightened people’s day.  “I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing so when I saw that someone had posted about how much they loved the heart, I felt really happy. Lots of people were commenting on how happy it had made them,” she says.

TJ has previously written kindness quotes on cards and dropped them into letterboxes of immediate neighbours. “I’ve been researching new things to do, around the school work I’ve been set, so there are more kindness acts coming,” she says.

Today we are starting a new section in The Voice called “This is Us”. During lockdown we were physically distanced, but connecting virtually we all learnt new things about each other – especially what the inside of our homes look like as we Zoomed! Our wonderful Dance and Spanish teacher, Giz Visser-Heydon, said she enjoyed learning things about people she actually knew pretty well already, and came up with the idea to profile a teacher or support staff member in each edition of this newslettter.

We like it. So, here to honour the person who came up the idea, we are profiling Giz herself.

What do you teach? Dance and Spanish. I was originally hired to teach Media Studies and English as my MA was in Media.

How long have you been a teacher? 13 years – I was offered a job at WGHS while on placement as a student-teacher at Westlake.

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve done in your career?  A 6-week trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands with 16 Westlake students, and performing with 32 of our students (and Mrs Young) in an international dance competition in Taiwan.

What’s the most interesting thing about you that people might not know? I (try) to speak 5 languages – Afrikaans, English, Spanish, German and Finnish. Trying to learn Swedish and Russian!

Greatest achievements:

• Being a mum to my son Axl. 
• Representing New Zealand at the Air Guitar World Championships in Finland twice. Placing 2^nd in the world in 2005 and 9^th in 2016.

If you were granted one wish: To end the cruelty that animals suffer. Having volunteered at a sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica, an elephant sanctuary in Thailand and a primate sanctuary in South Africa, I hope to pass these ideals on to my students.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and the one most frequently skipped. Adolescents skip breakfast for a variety of reasons often stating lack of time in the morning, not having food that is quick to prepare or simply not feeling hungry. Role modelling good breakfast eating habits to your daughter is important in developing lifelong healthy behaviours around eating.

The word breakfast literally means “breaking your fast” from the last time you ate (usually the night before). It provides the nutrients to start your day, assisting with concentration and mental performance. Studies show that individuals who eat breakfast are less likely to snack on high energy foods during the morning as the energy released keeps them going for longer.

How you can encourage your daughter to eat breakfast:

• Make breakfast a morning habit, try to sit and eat together.
• Be prepared. Have the components to make breakfast ready the night before, to avoid rushing.
• Remember to have a drink at breakfast, water, milk or a warm beverage.
• Focus on the breakfast meal, avoid having devices at the table.
• Encourage them to eat something no matter how small – the amount will increase as it becomes a habit.
• Foods that are quick and easy to make will be most popular, encourage your daughter to prepare breakfast herself where possible.
• Avoid making breakfast a battle – if she will not eat breakfast there is nothing wrong with your daughter bringing a nutritious snack to consume before school or at morning tea.

The Year 10 Food Technology classes have been focussing on breakfast during lockdown. Above and below are a sample of the breakfasts they made.

As lockdown restrictions are slowly being lifted to varying degrees, we enter a time of transition and adjustment. The circumstances of this situation have significantly impacted us all. For some it has been an opportunity to reflect on what is important, whilst others have embraced the opportunity to learn new things.

Many young people are excited to be back at school, while others may feel mixed emotions. Reactions will differ depending on how well they cope with stress and change. Keeping a check on your young adult’s mental health and wellbeing as they adjust to new routines, will be vitally important.

There is still a lot of uncertainty ahead of us, so focusing on the things you can control or enjoy doing or even value, can help establish predictability and familiarity for the whole family. Adult carers need to provide young people with reassurance by acknowledging any concerns and fears they may have at this time. Consider this to be a normal reaction, however it may be best to focus more on their feelings and emotions, rather than the practicalities at this stage.

In this SchoolTV Special Report, we share a few ideas to help ease this time of transition and adjustment.

View the report here

We’ve missed being able to bring these classes to you, but from Monday 18 May they are back! If you’re tired of walking around your neighbourhood with your bubble, we’d love for you to join us.

Monday 7pm – CardioFit
Wednesday 6pm – Yoga
Wednesday 7pm – Abs, Glutes, Thighs
Thursday 7pm – Zumba Dance Fitness
Saturday 8.30am – Cicruit
Saturday 9:15am – VeraFlow (Dance & Stretch)
Sunday 830am – Abs, Glutes and Thighs, 9:15am Zumba

All sessions are one hour in our Dance Studio and cost only $5 or $2 for students.

Check out Fitness @Westlake on Facebook for updates.

While New Zealand is now cautiously stepping forward, it’s good to remember that other countries are still struggling in the midst of the pandemic. Rumours abounded that this was written during the Irish famine in 1869. In fact, it was written a couple of months ago by a woman in America. But regardless of its “fake history”, this is a lovely poem!

And people stayed at home
And read books
And listened
And they rested
And did exercises
And made art and played
And learned new ways of being
And stopped and listened more deeply.

Someone meditated, someone prayed
Someone met their shadow
And people began to think differently
And people healed.

And in the absence of people who
Lived in ignorant ways
Dangerous, meaningless and heartless,
The earth also began to heal.

And when the danger ended and
People found themselves
They grieved for the dead
And made new choices
And dreamed of new visions
And created new ways of living
And completely healed the earth
Just as they were healed.