St Heliers School International Students

Today, we farewelled Yesung and Yunseong, brothers in Year 6 and Year 8, who are returning to Korea, with their Mum, Eunyoung. The brothers have been at St Heliers School for three years and have learnt so much English and had so many fun experiences. The family have travelled a lot around New Zealand! We are always sad to say goodbye but we wish the Jeong family a safe trip back home and lots of luck for their next adventures.

It was wonderful to see some of our international Korean Mums in the school's Language Centre for a Christmas celebration. It's been a long, tough year for everyone but especially for our Mums from overseas who are parenting and home schooling by themselves!

One of our amazing students and his family are returning to Korea this week. We will really miss David and his Mum Julie and we are sad to say goodbye. David has had an in incredible year of learning and fun at St Heliers school and made some very good friends. We held a farewell party for David and his classmates with gifts, cards, speeches and ice blocks.

Coming back to school has allowed us to finally catch up as a group of Mothers. We enjoyed a beautiful picnic and coffees at Glover Park and shared our lockdown experiences.

Welcome to our lovely new student in Year 0, Soohyeon. Her big sister, Sihyeon, is already studying at St Heliers school in Year 5.

The long lockdown is nearly over. I am so impressed with how our international students have engaged with the distance learning and how their Mums have coped with the challenges of being in lockdown for 4 months so far from home. A heartfelt thank you for the children and their families.

Welcome to Term 3! We had a sad start to this term, saying farewell to one of our lovely international students who is returning to China to rejoin their family. Zichen and his father Bill will be greatly missed at SHS. Zichen's classmates chose what to do on his last day to say goodbye to their friend. This involved a performance of the Matariki Macarena, a game of Capture the Flag and lots of popcorn!

Year 5 students have been spending this term working on a rocket building challenge called The Wonder Project. This week, we were testing how far and high the rockets could go. Here is international student Sihyeon testing her team's rocket! 🧨🧨🧨

Our international students often join sports teams at St Heliers School. This is our boys' Bays Suburbs soccer team who took out 1st place at the inter-school tournament this week. Our girls' team also won 2nd place in their tournament. Well done everyone!

At last week's Year 5-8 Merit Assembly, the Year 5 students were presenting their work on Mandalas and also digital citizenship, staying safe online. International students Zichen and Sihyeon were presenters. Zichen also won a merit award as did Siu. Congratulations everyone!

We have been embracing International Languages Week at St Heliers. We have over 90 students who speak a second language and/or have a first language other than English. Some of these students bravely stood up in front of their weekly assemblies (up to 300 people) and spoke about themselves in Korean, Russian, Mandarin, Portuguese, German, Albanian, Italian, Dutch and Thai to name a few. We also flew flags from different countries each day at school.