Mt Richmond’s special day

Rehearsal using Otahuhu Intermediate School's hall.

We are proud to be the first and as yet only special school in NZ that has participated in the Stage Challenge event (Auckland).

Our team of students and staff worked tremendously hard to get there and we were thrilled with the reception we got from mainstream students and their staff.

Our school wants to acknowledge the efforts of the Stage Challenge personnel who went out of their way to make us feel comfortable.

We were able to visit the Aotea Centre a few weeks before the event with our students so that they could acclimatise to the huge stage, enormous auditorium, underground dressing rooms, special lighting effects, and a foyer that could fit our school into it!

I know the students got such a buzz from their experience and I think performed so well due to the time we took in all the earlier stages.

What’s even more incredible is that our school does not have a hall, so our practices were done bit by bit in a covered atrium (which doubles as a playground and physical education teaching space); and then the hiring of the Otahuhu Town Hall as well as the generosity of the use of the hall space by Otahuhu Intermediate School. Without this support our item would not have been as successful.

In any event that our students are involved with, there is an army of teachers, teacher aides, therapists and support workers that are needed. Special school staff are a dedicated and caring staff. It is not an easy job!

We have to ensure that students have their correct medication, their mental health state to be assessed each day (and even each hour) and then very slowly encourage them to learn new things. So each learning stage takes a very long time. Each learning bit has to be clearly and kindly stated, and repeated many times.

So, learning is a deliberate and slow process making sure that our students have learnt each choreographed step, have the correct costume on for the scenes and are focused on the next part of the sequence of movement.

Our dance and music therapists are absolutely wonderful people, kind, confident and full of energy. They clearly demonstrate what it is to value people no matter who they are.

In the words of our two therapists: Allie Carter our dance specialist was thoroughly impressed with the attitude of the students. “Our students really rose to the challenge, and overcame their own personal obstacles to present a story that needed to be told. Their goal was to communicate that they desire and deserve the same opportunities to enjoy life as other teenagers. Here they were, on stage, competing with their peers, and proving exactly that.”

Music therapist Gary Davidson said, “the students put a lot of time and effort into preparing for Stage Challenge and should be very proud of the feedback received from the judges, audience and other school participants”.

The theme of our production was “Welcome to my Life” a life full of prejudice and discrimination that our students face each day of their lives.

For them, it was such a treat to be welcomed and loved by mainstream students who attended for that performance. The performance brought tears to the eyes of the audience and the judges.

We received a number of awards and were especially proud to receive Awards of Excellence for Social Awareness, and School Community.

Roll on next year!