SLANZA Principals' Award to Lee Whitelaw, Ohaeawai School

Lee Whitelaw, Principal at Ohaeawai School was a recipient of SLANZA’s Principals’ Award in 2013.

Lee has placed the library at the heart of literacy learning at Ohaeawai since she arrived at the school. She understands the vital importance of creating enthusiastic, fluent, engaged readers and writers, and sees the library as integral to achieving that goal.  At Ohaeawai, a decile 2 school of 160 students, 55% Māori, 96% of the children are reading at or above National Standards. 

The library is well staffed and supported, has strong and collaborative partnerships with the classroom programmes, and is actively creating readers and supporting learners throughout the day.  The library is also providing positive library experiences for the whole school community with parents regularly visiting to select books to share with their children.  

To hear Lee talk about her view of the library at Ohaeawai, see the Leading a learning community video on the Services to Schools website, and for more about the library and its school community relationships, see this short interview with Liz Christensen talking about how the library is involved with the Reading Together programme.