Celebrations and Tributes

Welcome to the world baby Mila Jane! Arrived on the 18th August 2020. Brand new baby daughter for Simon & Katie Hood. Congratulations Katie and Simon.

Kay Gatfield

It was with much sadness that our college received the news on Monday 14 Septebmer that Kay Gatfield had died after a relatively short illness. Kay joined the staff of Ōtūmoetai College in 2002 as an assistant teacher in the English Department, a position that she held to her untimely death.

Throughout her teaching career Kay specialised in teaching English. She taught with good humour and her classroom was always immaculately presented. It was her room and students knew it.

Her philosophy towards teaching was built on growing positive relationships with both students and staff. The learning would follow, she always argued, if the classroom environment was comfortable for one and all.

Kay was a very caring and immensely valued colleague who will be sadly missed by many. Nicola Wolken and Dale Weller welcomed twins on the 31st August. They arrived a little earlier than expected - but doing fine. The perfct pair - a boy and girl. Welcome to the world, Jay and Ivy.

Student Celebrations

Amber Harrison

has been selected to attend the Young Enterprise YES Latin America CAPE Trip... she is one of 20 chosen from over 4000 students participating in YE - with well over 150 students that applied. Last year the trip was an all-expenses paid trip to Chile so these students could have a life changing experience immersing themselves in Chilean culture visiting local and NZ businesses based in Chile... unfortunately due to COVID it is NZ based this year. Emily Mahon, Flora Clarke and Millie Tisch graduated from the Summerhill A1 Academy Leadership Course. Summerhill Youth Academy provided amazing opportunities for leadership and growth, and was executed through weekly sessions with people our age from across all Tauranga schools. We got to hear from a variety of speakers that provided an inspiration for ways to lead and live our values, as well as doing fun activities and competitions in our groups.

Holly Thompson New York Conservatory Scholarship

minute monologue and then have a discussion with

About 3 months ago I was doing a bunch of research into acting academies all over the world and the New York conservatory for Dramatic arts stood out to me so I registered my interest, then a week later I got an email saying they were offering Australian and New Zealand applicants a scholarship if they can complete their application by next week.

Obviously I had to go for it, not expecting to get in or get a get a me I had been accepted into the two year acting for

scholarship at all.

I auditioned through a zoom call face to face with (the Artistic director and president of NYCDA) and Elaine Capella (the admissions advisor) in the audition I had to do a 1 themes (kind of like an interview where I just had to tell them about myself) then they gave me direction on my monologue and got me to do again differently.

Two weeks later I got a call from Elaine and she told Richard Omar

film and television programme with a $13,500 (US) scholarship per year.