Preparing for our return back to Room 7

The past six weeks have been an amazing journey of learning, reflecting and adjusting. When we first started the lockdown, my biggest fear was - how are my students going to cope with their learning from home? How can I support them when they are not in class? Will the parents be able to help with their learning activities?

However...I strongly believe we have made it work Room 7. We utilised the technology we are blessed to have today, we utilitised the cluster we are blessed to be in and we also utilised the kaupapa of our school and made it work.

Having the hangouts was a great way to see you all and learn together. There were days I felt like the hangout was just simply a hangout where we chatted then you would go off and enjoy your day not giving a second through to your work. A few motivational speeches from Mrs Tofa changed that (I still have to copyright my motivational speech guys).

The blogs have been my go to for the last six weeks. Looking at your blog posts provided a wealth of knowledge, insight and appreciation to your efforts in your learning. Your individuality really comes across in your blog posts. Some of you really are fabulous authors with the way you present your personal voice in your blog posts.

I tried to incorporate your home life in your learning activities. Your whanau recipes were great, our whanau challenges for ANZAC, our school assembly...just pure joy to see. I hope through this lockdown you have been able to see just how important your home learning is as well as your school learning. I also hope you and your whanau have built on your capacity to work together in your learning. Remember this is all for you and your future. The more effort you put in, the more you will be able to receive in success.

Lastly my thank yous. First I would like to thank myself for being Room 7's greatest teacher (lol) just kidding. I would firstly like to thank all of you who consistently tried your best in your learning during the lockdown. Thank you for persevering with your learning. I would also like to thank your parents and caregivers for their on going support. I hope they have been able to enjoy and learn from our learning activities throughout the lockdown weeks. Big thank you to the Manaiakalani team for their support in setting up our hangout links and being there for me to call upon when I needed help. A massive faafetai lava to our Glenbrae whanau Mrs Patea and our staff members for the great team work and communication and guidance during the lockdown.

A special thank you which deserves to be in its own paragraph would have to be for our government. Our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the cabinet not forgetting Dr Bloomfield who is now almost as famous as Taika Waititi or maybe more famous? The support for education and our country has been phenomenal. I am truly grateful for how the government managed the Covid-19 pandemic and how they are still managing the effects of this pandemic on our nation.

Now, as we prepare to head back to school. I know some of you are excited and some might not be too excited about the early morning rises. Just be grateful we had experienced what we had with the lockdown. Covid-19 has changed the world in many ways. We are adaptive and resilient people and now we will go into school on Monday to make adjustments to our new norm.

With that, see you all on Monday. The photo is a preview of what our classroom will look like. I still have to fit in a few more tables in to cater for our class.