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Weekly Wrap Up

The Wrap Up (Term 1, Week 3, 2025)

Get your bike in gear for the Aotearoa Bike Challenge. Check out the impressive 2024 scholarship list and sign up for our upcoming Whānau Workshops. This and more in this week’s Wrap Up.

Important Dates

  • Thursday and Friday 13-14 February – School Photos
  • Thursday 20 February – Aroha Day
  • Monday 10 March – Board Meeting 6.00pm
  • Monday 7 April – Board Meeting 6.00pm
  • Friday 11 April – End of Term 1

What’s Happening?

Alumni

This week the school archivist Carey Clements has been taking care of visiting alumni.

The first visit was from siblings Ross and Jennifer Shotton, who attended the school in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. Ross has lived overseas for more than 60 years and this was his first visit back to the school since 1962. They were given a tour of the school, before meeting with some committee members of the Friends of WHS and Technical College Association and later some members of the WHS Board of Trustees (including Principal Dominic Killalea).  Their objective was to establish a future foundation for students. Ross also received a surprise visit from two members of his 6th form class (year 12) Dick Joyce (double Olympic gold medalist ) and Warren Snowden.
The second visit was Tom Priestley who was a student from 1974-77.  He was also given a tour of the school before meeting up with an old friend and fellow student  Danny Karatea-Goddard. It was Tom’s first visit back to WHS since the 1986 school centennial, 39 years ago.

Whānau Workshops

Supporting the Mental Health of Neurodivergent Teens: Tackling the Double Empathy Problem and Finding Practical Ways to Guide and Support them on their Journey’ with Shannon Hennig.

Our next free whānau workshop is on Monday 3 March 2025, 6:30pm – 8:00pm at school.  The Counselling Team and Learning Services are facilitating this event for parents and caregivers. Shannon Hennig is a speech-language therapist by training with over 20 years of experience supporting neurodivergent teenagers with the academic, linguistic, and social challenges of high school.  Shannon is known for her ability to weave evidence-based practices with practical strategies that don’t expect stressed parents to do even more. Topics covered will focus on ways to think about practical ways to support your young person, focusing on how anxiety, executive functioning, literacy skills, language skills, and social skills all interact. This session will include time for questions and answers.

There are 50 places available for this in-person event (there is no online option for attendance). To book please visit: https://www.trybooking.com/nz/VUE  Please note that bookings will close on Friday 28 February at 4pm for final planning before the event on Monday 3 March. 


Love to Ride – Aotearoa Bike Challenge

From 1 – 28 February individuals and organisations across New Zealand will compete to see who can get the most people riding a bike.

It doesn’t matter if you ride every day or haven’t been on a bike in years, you can ride anywhere anytime in February to take part. There are prizes to win for riding and encouraging your friends and colleagues to ride too

Wellington High School is registered so why not consider joining WHS staff and students by visiting https://www.lovetoride.net/nz and search for Wellington High School.


Achievements

2024 New Zealand Scholarship results

On Tuesday 11 Feb the NZ Qualifications Academy released the 2024 New Zealand Scholarship results. WHS students achieved well and are to be congratulated for gaining scholarships in Calculus, Chemistry, DVC, Painting, Physics, Printmaking, Religious Studies and Statistics and Technology.

In total 15 students achieved 21 scholarships. Shout out to Vita Lawson (Dux in 2024) and Marissa Burnette for achieving three scholarships each; Vita in Chemistry, DVC and Painting, and Marissa in Calculus, Chemistry and Physics and congratulations to all students who entered and achieved scholarship last year.


Lucian Petherick, top scholar in Technology

Lucian achieved his Top Scholar award within the Food Technology area. His scholarship report detailed his in-depth knowledge of the design and development of a technological outcome as well as the chemistry of food science.

He developed a vegan chocolate hokey pokey bar working in conjunction with a local artisan maker, Kate Necklen at Wonderland Chocolate, in Lyall Bay.

Lucian put in a significant amount of mahi outside of class time to be able to achieve at such an outstanding level.

Ka mau te wehi!


Pathways

A busy start of the year for the Pathways team.  Click here to read our first newsletter for Term 1. We have some excellent Whitireia & WelTec Taster courses on offer for this term that run half-days to full-days.  These provide experiences for ākonga in a variety of programmes. 

If you are interested in attending any of these taster programmes please contact Chuni bhikha bac@whs.school.nz or drop into S502.  Check out our WHS website for up to date pathways information. https://hub.whs.school.nz/pathways/