Year 9 students along with their House Leaders, House Captains and Year 13 Peer Mentors, were the first to kick off house events for 2021 with the inaugural ‘Te Wero Wai’ afternoon at Nayland Pool complex last Friday.
On enrolment, each student is assigned to one of the five Nayland College houses: Pegasus, Phoenix, Cygnus, Aquila or Draco. This house becomes their ‘school within a school’ over their time at Nayland College. As well as providing pastoral structure for the school, houses are an opportunity to participate in fun, team building, whanaungatanga and leadership events.
Last Friday afternoon over 450 students took part in Nayland’s inaugural Te Wero Wai, which involved competing in five activities spread around the Nayland Pool complex.
Year 9 students were given permission on the day to attend school in their house colours (each house has two corresponding colours which are used to represent their house and for house spirit).
On arriving, each house was given an event to begin with and then rotated around the four other events to follow. The wero (challenges) included a inflatable challenge where students need to make their way over a blow-up obstacle course, an underwater challenge, manu competition, a dry teacher carry where the mission is to carry as many people across the pool ‘dry’ and a chill out zone which allowed students to connect, recharge and do some of the dry-person challenges.
This event was such a positive start to the year with high participation from students and staff and support from the senior leaders around the school. One of the highlights of the day was Principal Mr Wilson being ‘dry person’ carried over the pool only to be pushed off just before exiting…
Other highlights included some really big ‘manu’s,’ teachers attempting some bombs, lots of colour and positive participation by the peer mentors, seniors, house leaders and house captains, smiles on lots of student faces and the determination to get to the end of the inflatable.
We look forward to the next house challenge coming up and the official House Day at the end of the term.
By Nayland College Heads of House
