Keep Jack Learning After Fire At South New Brighton School

On a windy Friday evening, on the 6th of March, fire ripped through several classrooms at South New Brighton School on the east side of Christchurch. It destroyed not only classrooms and everything inside them, but also the office of Jack's TLA (Teacher Learning Assistant), Bindi. Our son Jack is legally blind and attends South New Brighton School, he is seven years old, in year three. Bindi has worked alongside Jack and his teachers since the day he started. Bindi's daily support allows Jack to learn and fully participate alongside his peers in a regular classroom. In the fire on Friday, Bindi lost all her resources that she has accumulated over twenty years in her support role. Some of them are irreplaceable - documents, records, photos etc. which is truly devastating. A lot of the resources in that room, Bindi had provided for our children herself - they were not funded by

the Ministry Of Education or our school, but by Bindi out of the goodness of her heart to make our kids rich learning experiences possible. Some of the items destroyed included hundreds of dollars’ worth of books, specialised sporting equipment, an iPad; the list will grow on Monday, when hopefully she will be allowed to go back to the charred remains of her office. All the children, staff and community around this school have been through so much together - we have begun the rebuild after the destruction the earthquakes caused, we fought the threatened closure with the recent merging of schools, and we will recover from this too. I just want to help this amazing human Bindi, be able to keep doing what she does so well - support our kids who need her so much.

This page is not directly associated with South New Brighton School, I am a parent of a child at South New Brighton School, trying to help out her son’s Teacher Learning Assistant in her recovery of resources lost in the fire.

UPDATE: Our amazing school has said they will cover everything that was lost in the fire!! So, I have had to make a few changes to this GiveALittle Page to keep everything above board, this is what’s changed:

1. All funds are now going directly to South New Brighton School.

2. All funds raised will still be going towards Jack and his peers with additional learning needs to get some cool new adapted equipment for school - things like large print books for their library, adapted sporting equipment, and other additional classroom resources.

3: If, after this fantastic news that school will be replacing what Bindi has lost, you feel that you would like your donation back, that is absolutely fine and this can be arranged through the GiveALittle help desk.