Dear Parents, Caregivers & Friends of the College

A warm welcome back to all our boys for Term 2.  It has been a very positive start to the term with our boys settling back into routines quickly, focused on learning in the classroom, while embracing the wide range of co-curricular activities on offer at the College.  The winter sports season is fully under way, with our sports fields and gymnasium a hive of activity during and outside school hours.  Our arts programme is in full swing with the combined Tauranga Girls' College/Tauranga Boys' College production "Beauty and the Beast" receiving rave reviews after opening night on Wednesday.  Those involved in the arts are also busy in preparing for the NZ Schools' Super 8 Cultural Festival being held in New Plymouth at the end of May, with over 100 of our boys participating.

It is indeed heartening to see the high level of involvement of our boys in the co-curricular programme and the high level of performance attained by our talented young men.  Thanks to all who support this programme and give the boys from the College such wonderful opportunities - teaching staff, non-teaching staff, parents and members of the wider community.  It is important we and also your sons acknowledge the efforts of many who enable our boys to participate and compete in the many disciplines that are offered at the College.  I look forward to sharing the many successes of our boys involved in both sport and the arts over the winter months.

Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences
Thank you to all parents who took the opportunity to attend our Parent/Teacher/Student Conference on Thursday 10th May.  A reminder that we hold another these on Wednesday 16th May in the afternoon from 3.30pm to 7.30pm.  Note this will be a normal school day for students with formal instruction ending at 3.10pm.

We have made a change this year combining junior and senior interviews to be held over both nights and also extended the length of time to ten minutes per interview.  Your feedback on this change would be appreciated via return email.

A significant achievement that we recognise is that of "Centurion".  This term is used to describe those boys who have gained 100% of their Achievement Standard / Unit Standard Credits in their NCEA Qualification in one year, provided this is greater than 80 Credits at Level 1 and 60 Credits at Levels 2 and 3.  Those achieving Level 1 Centurion status are called Bronze Centurions, Level 2 Silver Centurions and Level 3 Gold Centurions.  This is recognised with the presentation of a badge and an appropriately coloured bar showing achievement at Bronze, Silver or Gold level.

This recognition occurred at a recent assembly, with the photo below featuring some of those boys who have achieved Bronze, Silver and Gold status.  These boys have achieved every Credit they have attempted in NCEA at the three levels.  An outstanding achievement recognising diligence and application to studies throughout the whole year with both internal assessments and external exams.

Centurion status is a goal a large number of our boys aspire to, and it is really encouraging to be able to recognise boys who have achieved this status at some level in 2017.
 

2017 Centurions

Year 11 
Level 1 (Achieved in 2017) BRONZE
Sam Ashton, Koro-Boy Atutahi, Harrison Baldwin, Ryan Bosselmann, Derek Cerda-Jimenez, Dongmin - Eric Choi, Thomas Culling, Harry Donald, Jackson Edgar, Aidan Everitt, Jorge Goodchap, Rory Goodchap, Zane Hamilton, Daniel Hampton, Millar Hann, Bodhi Harris, Jeremy Henshaw, Ollie Kelly, Taylor Kennedy, Keun Young - Luke Kim, Matt Lander, Tobias Langdon, Rangi Tu Lehmann Moetara, Harry Low, Campbell Lucas, Logan Marshall, Luke Matthews, Cullen McGarva, Quinn Murdoch, Joshua Preston, Fraser Pugh, Mansfield Reay-Martin, Alex Rendell, Tyzak Rhind, Harrison Shaw, Toby Smethurst, Jordan Sonneveld, Xavier Southall, Liam Stewart, Jack Tortoiseshell, Cailem Whitburn, Cameron Woods, James Yoon, 

Level 2   (Achieved in 2017) SILVER
Andrew Creighton, Tyler Creighton, James Derrick, Morgan Hatch,  Ryan Schneebeli

Level 1 & Level 2 (Achieved in 2017) BRONZE & SILVER
Ryan Anderson, Campbell Browne, Max Came, Karaitiana Campbell, Jialan Campbell-Luo, Kai Chalmers, Michael Chrisp, Johnathan Coe, Hunter Dickson, Quaid Forbes, Adam Galdeman, Lachlan Jeffrey, Alexander Jenkin, Ben Kang, Sam Kang, Juhoon-Leo Kim, Nathan King, Robbie Maris, Ben Maxwell, Jack McManaway, Glen Moorhouse, Alex Penellum, Caelan Potts, James Power, James Robinson, Thomas Scott, Josh Tisch, Alexander Trask, Kees Tucker, Alex Van Breda, Timothy Yang

Year 12   2017 BRONZE
Level 1 (Achieved in 2017)
Kyle Blackburn, Joel Natzke, Hugo Van Cingel

Level 2 (Achieved in 2017) SILVER
Joshua Badshah, Charlie Bell, Jack Broadley-Ryan, Matthew Crockett, Reuben Danen, Declan Dempster, Tanner Devcich, Luca Dromgool, Samuel Forsyth, Nicholas Freeman, Russell Green, Daniel Harrison, Lachlan Haycock, Ryan Henderson, Jacob Heyblom, Jacob Logan, Maxwell Loomb, Severn Macleod Gore, Jack Miller, Liam Moffatt, Kye Oldham, Ryan Peddle, Max Pottage, Jayden Richter, Thomas Shaw, Connor Simpson, Brad Skudder, Alevandre Talopau, Cody Tanner, Tai Vaeau, Gareth Ward-Allen, Tomas Worden, Kevin You

Level 3 (Achieved in 2017) GOLD
Matthew Brittain, Finlay Burke, Drew de Wet, Scott Ellerington, Jacob Forward, Adam Hitchiner, Ryan Holt, Syed Islam, Md Shadman Jahin, Edward Johnson, Ethan Kilsby, Braden King, Matthew Manners, Fletcher Oxford, Alfred Shum, Matthew Taylor, Mitchell T White

The following boys have achieved Centurion Status in all Levels - L1, L2, L3
BRONZE, SILVER & GOLD
Matthew Brittain, Finlay Burke, Drew de Wet, Syed Islam, Md Shadman Jahin, Edward Johnson, Ethan Kilsby, Braden King, Matthew Manners, Fletcher Oxford, Alfred Shum, Matthew Taylor, Mitchell T White.

These young men have achieved every Credit they have attempted, 100% pass rate of Credits, hence Centurions.

Start making the most of what TBC has to offer:  branch out, try new things, make new friends, because TBC is a damn good place to sculpt yourself into a better man. It’s the perfect place to discover who you are, what you like, what you aspire to be. Throughout my time here at TBC I’ve made it my goal to branch out to these different areas.

In sports, I’ve heavily devoted myself to canoe slalom, taking top overall paddler at this year’s secondary schools champs, and heading over to Italy later this year for my second Junior World Championships.  I sacrifice a large amount of my time to chase that Olympic dream.

In arts, I’m a huge fan of the performing arts.  I’ve been part of the drama class since day one and therefore became involved in various productions and Shakespeare acting competitions, loving every bit of it.

And finally my academics.  I was accepted into the ‘B’ accelerate class in year 9,  and made my way up to the ‘A’ class in year 10. Throughout my NCEA journey, I’ve picked up 227 Excellence credits, making up a total of 70% of all my credits. I Excellence Endorsed both levels 1 and 2, and am only a couple of credits away from doing the same in level 3. So all in all I can’t complain about that area.

Now, what I want you to understand about my collected credits is that they didn’t all come from subjects like calculus, physics and chemistry. They’ve come from a wide range of subjects, being drama, biology, athlete development programme, English, statistics, etc.  I want you to understand that, because something that I hate that seems to be plague-ing  the minds of college students is this generalising idea of what ‘academic’ subjects are. I want you to understand that education and academics are not limited to 5 or so subjects. I looked up the definition of education and good old google showed me that ‘education is the acquisition of knowledge, skill, values, beliefs and habits’ gained by ‘storytelling, discussions, teaching and training’. Just with one simple google search we can see how wide this area of education is. Learning an instrument is education, training for a sport is education, being in a classroom and being taught is education. I don’t want any of you to constrict your boundaries because of this desperate idea of academics, because anything that you learn from and gain experience from to sculpt yourself in to a better man is education. 

So, my final words to you are this: find your passions, try out a variety of subjects and see what you like and dislike.  Figure out which subjects will lead you to a future that you will love, and work hard at them.  As well as this, continue to work hard at your extracurricular activities, your sports, your arts, your community services, because you are constantly learning from them. I don’t want any of you to despise your time here at TBC, so do what you’re passionate about and sculpt your own future the best that you possibly can. 

I’m no writer or author by any means, so I think the idea that I want to portray to you guys is best said in a quote by Dr. Seuss: “You have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes, you can steer yourself any direction you choose”. 

Damian Torwick
Academic Captain

CROSS COUNTRY

On Wednesday we held our annual Tauranga Boys' College Cross Country House Competition.  This was held on the school grounds around Nicholson Field and Southey Field, and is compulsory for Year 9 and Year 10 boys, and voluntary for senior boys.   The competition was fierce for house points, with a number of teachers also running the various races.  House points were awarded to boys who beat teachers, with points signposted on their backs 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and then tallied to establish the overall champion House at each level.  A highlight for many was a water slide placed in front of the finishing line.    Overall results are pictured below.

The Tauranga Boys' College Championship races will be held in conjunction with the Bay of Plenty Secondary Schools' Championships, to be held at Waipuna Park on Tuesday 22nd May.  From this a team will be selected to represent the College at the NZ Super 8 Schools' Cross Country Competition to be held Monday 28th May, also at Waipuna Park.

CLAY TARGET SHOOTING

Tauranga Boys' College sent 16 boys  to Taupo recently to compete in the next round of their shooting competition. Our A team of Shaun Gwillim, Max Shallard, Joel Edmonds, Brady Anderson and Thomas Box shot 278/300 to come first out of 22 teams which was a great effort against some strong competition. The B team of Alex Trask, Luke Miles, Jerramiah Hay, Alex Williamson and Ollie Goode shot 267/300 to place 4th equal.  Our new shooters Hunta Lett, Adam Hollis, Sam Finlayson, Tyler Brazier, Seth Booth and Tom Cato shot for either their first or second time in a competition and had a good day experiencing competitive shooting. 

Individually Shaun shot 86/90 and shot off for 2nd and 3rd senior boys with 6 others and ended up 4th.  

Pictured below:  Mr Ben Tuck,  Coach, Joel Edmonds, Thomas Box, Shaun Gwillim (captain), Brady Anderson, Mr Tiggy Clayton, Coach, absent Max Shallard (vice captain).