School House Newsletter - Week 3

By Vai Mahutariki | Posted: Friday August 12, 2022

Welcome to our Week 3, Term 3 Hostel Newsletter

THE WEEK AHEAD:

Term 3, Week 4

Monday 15
Richie Hardcore visit
9MAO trip to Museum

Tuesday 16

Wednesday 17

Thursday 18

Friday 19
11GEO trip to Macraes mine
OSS Jazz festival - OBHS auditorium

Saturday 20
Year 13 formal

Term 3, Week 5

Monday 22 - Wednesday 24
12ODR Ski trip and assessment

Tuesday 23

Wednesday 24 - Friday 26
13ODR Ski trip and assessment (change over day)

Thursday 25
Otago University Liaison course planning meetings (Year 13)

Friday 26
Teachers Only Day school closed for tuition

Friday 26 - Sunday 28
School Ski trip

Tena tatau e te whanau, and greetings to all our School House Hostel and OBHS Community. We have had another busy week with preparations for internal and external assessments ongoing as well preparations for a number of Semi Final games in various sports and grades. Added to this we have had the School Production which has featured a number of our hostel boys and included our entire hostel attending the Wednesday night show to experience something that some boys won’t ever do again.

Man of the Week

Congratulations to Year 10 boy Eddie Burgess for consistently demonstrating that School House Hostel mantra of being a top bloke around the hostel and getting involved and supporting his mates. A person who leads both on and off the field and lives and breathes the essence of a true brotherhood. Well done Eddie.

Congratulations to Year 12 boy Rota Lafita who was awarded man of the match for his contribution to the 1st XV team in an outstanding performance against Dunstan High School in Alexandra. His leadership, direction and communication skills were excellent and his ball carrying and defence were second to none which also finished with him scoring the final try of the match from a solo effort and confirmed a bonus point win. Well done Rota.

School Production

Well done to our Deputy Head of Hostel Sam Gavin on playing a leading role in this years production and literally being the life of the show. Our hostel boys enjoyed supporting Sam and the cast on Wednesday night and had a great time watching Sam’s performance. We also acknowledge all our Senior boys who were part of the 1st XV Dance Troop that were also involved in the production. Something that was outside the square and their comfort zones and they did themselves and the hostel proud. These boys included Head of Hostel Thomas O’Connor, Prefects Issac Ottrey and Cody Campbell, as well as Ryan Egan, Rota Lafita, Phoenix Tapatu, and Charlie Mathias.

Junior Social - St Hilda's

All the buzz among our hostel Juniors in the beginning of the week was about the Junior Social hosted by the St Hilda's Hostel. As always, the girls did an amazing job hosting our boys as well as the John McGlashan juniors on Thursday night. Our year 9s and 10s got off to a slow start with the usual shyness and refusal to stand anywhere near the girls. With great music and a couple of boys following the lead from our four prefects that helped out, everyone finally took a chance and got outside their comfort zone. In the end three of our boys even won some prizes. Huge thank you to the Tolcarne staff and pupils for an enjoyable evening with good music and even better food for our boys. Thank you also to prefects Thomas O’Connor, Isaac Ottrey, Ned Flannery and Cody Campbell for helping staff supervise our boys at the social and making sure we kept the standards up and displayed our School House values.  We will be hosting our own Junior Social in Week 5.

Build up of Rubbish from boys being messy and added outside takeaway mess.

We have having some consistent issues with boys being very messy and throwing rubbish and food around the hostel inside the dorms. This is also added by the large amount of takeaways your boys are bringing into hostel on the weekends leading into Monday morning which is where the largest amount of rubbish and mess is being identified by our Housekeeping team. This is not good enough from our hostel expectations and therefore there will now be some changes;

Changes: Boys who order takeaways on the weekends (the only time takeaways in permitted) will not be permitted to bring these items into the hostel. Rather they will have an allocated place and table and chairs outside the Weekend Matrons Room for them to consume their food before placing their rubbish in the allocated bin and then can enter hostel again.

There will also be a roll call taken during dinner times to make sure that we can follow up on boys regularly not making dinners times to see how we can better support them.

When boys sign out on leave they will be asked to confirm if they will be back for dinner and then also lunches on the weekends. This will also allow us to plan more accurately accordingly and not waste too much food when meals are being prepared for your son/s and they are getting takeaways instead. Boys are more than welcome to eat both as long as they confirm they are back for dinner etc.

Upcoming Events:

Mitchell Cup - House Challenges: There will be Swimming and Cultural Night in Week 8

We will be hosting a Junior Social in Week 5 - Wednesday 24th August in the McCaw Room.

Follow us on our social media platforms Instagram: @obhshostel and Facebook Otago Boys’ High School Hostel for information and activities our boys are doing.