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Te Reo O Te Roto
The Language of the Lake
Issue 96 | 21 February 2025
From the Principal

Principal's Welcome Feb 21

Kia ora, everyone,

We’ve had an incredible couple of weeks, filled with achievements and special moments.

Westlake Girls continues to rank among the top schools, and once again, our 2024 academic results have been outstanding. We are immensely proud of our students for their scholarship success—a truly impressive accomplishment!

Our Academic Assembly was a fantastic celebration, bringing together top scholars, scholarship winners, former students, and proud parents in our Covered Courts to honour these achievements. We also recognised our 2025 student leaders. It was a wonderful opportunity to recognise our students’ dedication and hard work.

We had a dynamic NCEA Information Evening and were delighted with the turnout (over 850 attendees). This was a great opportunity for us to be able to share important information relating to NCEA and to give our parent community answers to its questions.

Our Year 9 Information Evening gave new parents a chance to meet teachers and deans and ask questions. We welcome you all to Westlake Girls.

This week, staff had the opportunity to learn from gifted education expert Brooke Trenwith of Potential to Performance Ltd in an insightful and practical session on supporting gifted and talented students. It was a valuable professional learning experience and an inspiring way to start the year.

We were thrilled to see former student Tara Vaughan recognised at the Halberg Awards on Tuesday night as part of the Team of the Year! It’s always exciting to see Westlake alumnae excelling at the highest level. Read more about the awards here.

Today is Athletics Day—one of the year’s most anticipated events!  With the perfect mix of competition and fun, it’s always a highlight on the school calendar.

It’s been a busy and inspiring start to the year, and we can’t wait to see what’s next.

Have a lovely weekend.

Jane Stanley

Principal

Sports

Tabloid Sports Day - (Year 9s only)

Year 9 House Tabloid Sports Day will be on Thursday, 27 February! It will be a fantastic way for our Year 9 students to connect as a form class and House.

This is an opportunity for Year 9s  to experience a Westlake House event together. This will allow students to make new connections in their form class and House while having fun.  It’s a great way to create a positive school connections at the start of the year.

Who is involved – All year 9 students, Form teachers, House Deans, Sports prefects, House Captains

When  – Thursday, 27 February

Where – The Undercover Courts at school.

Year 9 parents, you should have received an email  about this on 21 Feb. If you didn’t, contact Bridget Ellis-Pegler at [email protected] and she will send you the information.

Career Bites

Career Bites - chiropractic

Career Bites this week featured chiropractic. We heard from two women in the profession who were very positive and enthusiastic about this career. Sofia Laurie is a young graduate who is running her own chiropractic business in the city. Running a business and many of the skills needed for this are taught alongside a deep understanding of anatomy, physiology, diagnostic imaging and pathology.

Chiropractors are interested in working with the spine and the nervous system. The nervous system is important in controlling all the functions of our body. The most important message is that chiropractors can have a very positive impact on people without the use of drugs or surgery. Chiropractors learn how to look at spinal x-rays and consider people’s overall health. Paediatric and geriatric care are specialisations for chiropractors.

Our speakers were keen to dispel the myth that a chiropractor needs to be big and strong to manipulate patients. In fact, technique is much more important and many of the manoeuvres performed are very gentle.

Philippa Wheatcroft works at the chiropractic college.  She said that chiropractors can earn a good salary and can have flexibility with working hours. The degree takes 5 years to complete and while a science to Level 3 is recommended, it is not required.

The chiropractic school is in Mt Wellington

https://chiropractic.ac.nz/

Community

Westlake Wellness - How to be a good friend

Whether you are new to Westlake Girls High School or you have been here for years, having friends is an essential part of your school experience. Different maturity levels and experiences through adolescence mean that the friends you had last year may not be the people you want to be around so much this year…but you can still be a good friend.

Be Trustworthy

Friendships are often formed through shared experiences and time spent together, so it is important to make time to connect with your friends and strengthen relationships. Be careful with the information your friends share with you. If it is private, respect them by treating it as confidential and not spreading rumours.

Be Supportive

Be the person who is positive and supportive. Actively listen; you don’t have to judge or give advice. Just be there and hear what your friend says; it might be related to home, school, or relationships, or something else. Encourage and motivate your friends – be happy for their successes.

Be Reliable

Keep your promises and do what you say you’ll do. Include your friends in group activities and don’t ditch them for others, real friends are there in good times and bad.

Image: Photo by Drz on Unsplash

Academic

Need a study boost? Academic Prefects are here to help!

Community

International students' homework club

This year, we encourage and support our international prefects in organising events and activities to help them develop their organisational, planning, and communication skills.

One such initiative is the Homework Club, every Tuesday in C7 from 3.30pm to 4.30pm for all international students. This provides a dedicated space for students to study together, receive assistance, and stay on top of their work. It also offers an opportunity for students to build friendships and connect with one another.

Notices

Student ID cards coming soon

Student ID cards for 2025 will be available in early March for $8.00.

In school, these are essential as students use them to print on the school printers and issue books at the library.

The Student ID cards enable student discounts at Auckland Transport and other offerings like the cinema.

These can be paid for through the student account in SchoolBridge, or at the Payments Office by Eftpos or cash.

Once paid for, ID cards will be distributed to students through their form teachers. Unpaid cards will be held at the Payments Office for collection upon payment.

Notices Uncategorized

Dropping off and collecting students

Our school entrance is extremely busy at the beginning and end of the school day. Please do not drop off or collect students inside the car park or near the entrance. Instead, park on one of the many side streets surrounding the school.

Don’t get locked in…

Additionally, a reminder that our car park gates are locked between 3:00pm and 3:30pm for the safe exit of our students.

Thank you for helping us keep Westlake Girls a safe place for everyone.

Notices

School finish time

We are receiving many requests for students to leave school early.  The school day finishes at 3.15pm. We cannot accommodate requests for early departure.

 

 

Community

Homestay birthday celebration

On 19 February, one of our international students Miki had a birthday. Her kind host family made a fun, happy celebration out of it. Miki and Winnie (another of our international students) prepared chef-quality native dishes from their countries and Sushma, the mother of the host family, prepared dumplings, and apple pie with mochi ice cream.

Afterwards, they cut the birthday cake and gave Miki some gifts as a memory of her birthday in New Zealand.

Career Bites

Career Bites - Social media entrepreneurs, 'The Cheeky Golf Club’

For our first Career Bites session of 2025, we were excited to offer students something a bit different. Ben, Nic and Tim Sudmann are three Kiwi brothers who have taken a big swing at YouTube success with their channel, ‘The Cheeky Golf Club’. They kindly gave up some golfing time to meet our students and offer aspiring content creators some helpful hints.

Their first tip was to find something you’re passionate about because passion brings motivation. It’s much easier to wake up in the morning and film if you’re doing something you love – even if you have to get up at 5am to shoot a daily video before fitting in a full day’s work at your ‘normal’ job – as Tim was doing in London when the channel first started.

Students also learned about the hard work involved. The brothers reminded us that what viewers see is the fun part. Behind the scenes, there is about a week’s worth of editing for every video, as well as directing and other production-related tasks. While this may sound daunting, Ben was keen to emphasise that all of this hard work helps to develop a wide range of marketable skills: “You are building a huge skill set. These skills are only going to up in value as the creator economy grows.”

Getting the format right also involves a lot of trial and error and reflection – the brothers have learned from the responses to every video. Finding their niche meant testing out different ideas and monitoring viewer numbers and retention closely to see what worked and what didn’t. Eventually, they realised that they needed (and wanted) to appeal to golfers and non-golfers alike, and the importance of storytelling (i.e. skilful editing) in attracting this broad audience.

The presentation finished on an encouraging note for students. Though not every content creator will be able to make a living (through brand partnerships, advertising space, and merchandising), the pathway is open for people who want to try. You can shoot and edit on an iPhone, and there is plenty of content-creation expertise on YouTube itself that you can tap into. Nic’s advice? “Be brave and start posting – see if you like it.”

 

 

 

 

 

Notices

Lockers

Upstairs lockers are still available for purchase– $60.00 for the year.

Here is the link to the website to pay online.

https://www.westlakegirls.school.nz/student-life/practical-information/payments/lockers/

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