Special Character

The basis for a state integrated school such as ours is an agreement between the proprietors and the Ministry of Education. The Ministry supplies all the costs of running a school (hence why it is called state-integrated) and the proprietors supply the land and buildings. Since the proprietors give up significant capital assets, they are allowed to set the special character of the school. At Totara College, our special character is non-denominational Christian with a definition given in the statement of faith that parents sign on enrolment.

Essentially, we operate from a fundamental, bible-based, Christ-centred, Christian doctrine with a realisation that different denominations do differ in their approach to certain topics; and this is healthy.

Our teaching focuses on:
Building young people of good character using our values as the basis
Teaching good character and knowing God through the bible
Memory verses where appropriate
Prayer
Growing understanding of God as the creator and the one who loves us all personally
Opportunities to interact with God (which can be through singing, praise, dance etc)

Monday mornings open with a full school assembly where all students form Year 0-13 are taught, usually by the principal, devotionally around the term theme (integrity, respect, diligence or kindness), value or scripture. An example of this would be a theme of Animals, a value of Kindness and a memory verse around how the Lord expects us to treat other people e.g:

1 Corinthians 13 v 4-7

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Tuesday-Friday, the day opens with Devotions for 30mins. This can be any mix of teaching from the bible, prayer, singing, discussing issues and thinking about what God says about them.

After devotions, in our normal lessons we teach the national curriculum, similarly to state schools, but it is often infused with Christian messages or bible verses where appropriate.

In the primary years, students are developing as young people and the teaching tends to be focussed on laying a positive foundation.

In the secondary years, students are going through (or have gone through) the puberty process and hence are in the transition into adulthood. At this stage they are forming the person they will become, and many changes occur both physically and cognitively. The focus for devotions at this point is more on having students think about the God who created them, what he says and what this means for them.

One of the curricula we use is ACE (Accelerated Christian Education) which gives a personalised progression of learning concepts through booklets (called paces). These contain frequent biblical, gospel messages.