Week 4 Term 2 - Totara House: Understanding our House Values (May 15 - May 19)

Nothing is more important when building a structure than a strong foundation. Poor foundations make for unstable buildings 

Year 12 Totara House students leading assembly Term 1 2023

Creating a healthy and safe culture in the classroom is something that takes time and that requires preparation and good intent. Creating a healthy, safe and nurturing culture across year levels - in a House system - requires not only preparation, good intentions but also vision and direction. Since the beginning of the full House system was introduced in 2021, Totara House have come up with their own set of values. The purpose of this is to give our students and house overall, a sense of identity and purpose. I wrote a reflection on how the students came up with our House for 2023 (see Alby's Blog Post Entry - 27/03/23). 

Totara House Values 2023

The values for 2023 are 'Integrity, Leadership and Gratitude' supported by the House quote created by the House leaders - which encompasses the values - Together we will lead, show no greed, do what is right, Totara Unite. Since then, we have used the end of Term 1 and the first 3 weeks of Term 2, to talk about the values and what it means to us. Over the last 4 weeks, we have explored each value and what it means and how it applies it us. I wanted to use this time to go through each value and what can look for our house and more importantly, what it can look for the students individually. 

I believe that it was good for the students to understand the values and to see what it means for them as a collective. At our most recent assembly, the some of our Year 10 students shared what the values meant to them. The questions that the student's were given to help them for their presentation on our House Values were: 

• What does the (value) mean to you?
• What does the (value) look for Totara House?

The purpose of getting the students to do this was to get them to share their understanding of the values and how they want the House to understand or action the value. The students respond well and listen well when they are lead by their peers. 

Y10 - Omid Hessari - presenting on Integrity

Y10 - Benjamin Kava - presenting on Leadership

Y10 - Papiloti Pita - presenting on Gratitude

Some highlights from the sharing was "Leadership to me means to maturely contributing to anything to help out and also doing things your own way" (Benjamin Kava), "Integrity for Totara House means that we should try and be honest in everything that we do, even if we do the wrong thing, be honest about it and take responsibility for it" (Omid Hessari) and "Gratitude is for Totara House is doing things with a grateful heart" (Papiloti Pita). This was an awesome opportunity for the students to reflect and lead. Leadership is a value that we have being exploring this term, with our Year 10 students leading assembly to our Year 12 students preparing the House for Samoan Language (week 6) - we are excited to venture out and delve into what these values look like for our whanau group.