Gore District Council Awards

Gore Main School was nominated for the Mainland Minerals Environment Award to be presented at the 2017 Gore District Council Awards!  It was such an honour!  Here is what the nomimee wrote about us...

REASON FOR NOMINATION: 

Gore Main School have been an Enviro-School since 2009 and have moved from a Bronze to Silver Enviro-School in this time.  This year the focus for them has been for the school to move from a Silver to a Green/Gold Enviro-School.  To be awarded Green/Gold Enviro status is a very big deal and means that everybody in the school (staff, BOT, children) are committed to sustainable practise.  Reflection about where to go next and how the school can be more sustainable occurs within the school and everyone is involved.  All students have key values that they are learning about.  These are:  Sustainable practise/community, Taonga (Maori perspectives), Actively Engaged Students, Respect for our Enviro-School and Strong diversity.  The first letter of these key values spells out STARS – which aligns with the school motto ‘Reach for the stars’.  The school is trying to provide a learning environment with the ‘environment’ as the focus.  Currently the senior children are building and designing gardens to be able to grow food/produce for the community.  For example, flowers are going to be grown to give to rest-homes and potatoes may be grown as food for those that require it.  Gore Main School values their community and want to give back to it by doing this, and teach children some important skills along the way.  The Junior children are studying bees.  Recently Gore Main was gifted a bee hive (gentle Leafcutter bees) by Gore New World.  It is definitely out there in the community that Gore Main is serious about the Environment.  The staff at Gore Main School show passion for the Environment and this is really obvious as you see students out in their school, looking after the hens, growing food, recycling fruit scraps into composts and worm farms, recycling milk 4 schools containers and trying to eliminate rubbish from their school.  This school deserves a nomination for this award.   

So, on Friday the 3rd of November, Mrs M, Mrs Hargest, Mrs Russell, Miss MacBeth and Miss McWhirter took 11 Gore Main School children to the awards!  This was a very special gala event and the children and teachers were very excited.  We had a very nice dinner together (Lambshanks, mash, and cheesecake for desert).  There was a photobooth there that the children (and Mrs M) really enjoyed.  It was a terrific night and the Gore District Council really should be pleased with the great night they put on.  We didn't win the Mainland Minerals award, but it was still a terrific honour to be noticed in the community for the work that we are doing at Gore Main.