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westbrook student council 2009

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our 2009 student council is made up of 16 students from years 4 5 and 6 there are 5 boys and 11 girls this year s councillors are · · year 4 hayley hope trent davidson riley marsters lana moree year 5 caitlin koller rachel mahar sharvon mortimer anita bentley year 6 sam grouby james devenport jordan andrews akuhata bailey-winiata sinead macdonald amelia jensen thomas blackburn anna bird · the council is ably led by our two co-presidents anna bird and james devenport the council have had a very successful year and have stepped up to the challenge of being student leaders and role models within our school the following pages outline the student council s involvement and achievements this year voting is underway for our 2010 student councillors who will be inducted and introduced at our next school assembly.

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one of the roles of the student councillors is to present the citizenship awards at our fortnightly school assemblies the awards are presented by two councillors each time to one child per class the child is voted for by their peers and the criteria for selection is · · · · good school attendance punctuality behaviour and work habits card must remain on green every day no options room etc practising the westbrook way whanaungatanga respect responsibility initiative excellence

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paper recycling in 2008 we started a paper recycling programme schools are notorious for using a lot of paper and we decided that it would be worth recycling used paper rather than sending it to the landfill every monday the student councillors collect the paper bins from their own room and their buddy room and empty them into the big wheelie bins with the yellow lids these get collected once a week by waste management and the paper gets recycled our flattened cardboard boxes are also recycled we also earn points for every wheelie bin emptied and these can be used at the end of each year to purchase shrubs to plant at school in term 3 we entered the new world make a difference campaign the challenge was to collect as many unwanted plastic bags as possible and take them down to new world to be weighed the winners were chosen on a weight per student basis and being a large school it was difficult to collect the volume of plastic bags we would have needed to beat the smaller schools all the same we did our bit for the environment and had fun squashing the bags into mrs weinberg s boot!

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pyjama day and our visit to the ronald mcdonald retreat every year the student council selects a worthy charity to raise money for this year we as a council decided that the newly built ronald mcdonald retreat in ngongotaha which supports families of children with life-threatening illnesses would be the recipients of our fundraising efforts the children had the idea that since sick children spend a lot of time in bed we would hold a pyjama day at westbrook we emailed ronald mcdonald to see if he could visit our school but he was fully booked instead rob parry the manager of the mcdonalds restaurants in rotorua contacted mrs weinberg and asked if our councillors would like to have a guided tour of the retreat we took him up on the offer and felt that the retreat was a wonderful place for suffering families to take a break this experience made it more real to us and confirmed the reason for the fundraising our pyjama day was very successful we raised $572 and had great fun mr parry cam along to our school assembly and we were able to present him with the cheque he was very grateful and overawed by our generous support.

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special occasions our student council presidents are often called upon to represent the school at special occasions anna and james accompanied colin to the presentation at mcdonalds for the christmas lights donations in april when the official opening of the hall was held anna was asked to accompany celeste raisbeck and sheila lynch in the cutting of the ribbon she did a fine job!

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the big day out on the first week in term 4 the student council were fortunate enough to visit the rotorua district council facilities as part of our big day out we started at the council chambers and met with the mayor kevin winters who spoke to us about what it is to be a leader a role model and a representative to the people we were able to make comparisons between his role in rotorua and ours in our school we then visited the museum and were shown through the exhibits next we went to the aquatic centre for lunch and a swim lastly we visited the public library and had a tour of their refurbished facilities.

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our visit to lara lodge in term 2 the student councillors went to lara lodge to take to the elderly people living there we all had fun talking to the residents and sharing our school experiences with them what was even more interesting was listening to their tales from years gone by one lady spoke in dutch so caitlin couldn t understand a word she said but she listened politely and attentively all the same we found this a very rewarding experience and would recommend to next year s councillors to do the same again.

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gala our student council did a lot of work behind the scenes leading up to gala we went around to our buddy rooms to promote the stalls and encourage donations to be brought in we also collected the books canned food and mystery jars and sorted them on the night some of us helped mrs weinberg with her treasure hunt stall breakfast programme 2009 was the first year that westbrook have offered a breakfast programme weetbix is on offer in the hall mondays and thursdays from 8.30am some of the councillors go along to help set up and do the dishes!

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