On Friday, the “School Quality Survey” form from the Department of Education was sent home with each child. The purpose of this survey is to provide the State Charter School Commission with one indicator of parent satisfaction with Alaka`i O Kaua’i Charter School. Please do your best to complete and return these surveys with your child by the end of the week. Thank you!

• Please do your best to be on time to school! Students need to be dropped off no later than 8:10 a.m. every day. (The earliest drop-off time is 7:30 a.m.) Late arrivals are disruptive to the start of the school day, so please do your best to make it on time (without speeding on our road!).
• Dismissal is at 2:25 p.m., Mon-Thurs, and 1:40 p.m. on Fridays. Please do not arrive early to sign out your child before 2:25 p.m. unless absolutely necessary.

At Alaka’i O Kaua’i, our school-wide discipline policy is based on the foundational skills of Love and Logic. Love and Logic is a philosophy founded in 1977 by Jim Fay and Foster W. Cline, M.D. It is the approach of choice among leading educators, parents, and other professionals worldwide, as it is dedicated to making parenting and teaching fun and rewarding, instead of stressful and chaotic. Alaka’i O Kaua’i believes:

Respect, appreciation, and love prevents potential problems

• When learners feel respected, appreciated and even loved by their teachers, they are far  more motivated and cause far fewer problems.

Freedom to problem-solve and make decisions fosters motivation

• Learners are far calmer and more motivated when their faciltators allow them to make choices and solve their own problems within limits.

Focusing energy on problem prevention is rewarding

• Successful educators focus most of their energy on simple tools for preventing  misbehavior or keeping it small, rather than trying to provide consequences for every problem.

Showing empathy and compassion is effective

• When consequences are necessary, effective educators provide them with sincere empathy or compassion.

Linda Krystek will be offering “Parenting with Love and Logic, Part 1” at Alaka’i O Kaua’i on Tuesday, Jan. 15, from 2:45-4 p.m. in the Library. Join us to learn how to show love and empathy while setting limits and holding children accountable with logical consequences. We will be diving deep into the Five Core Principles of Love and Logic and learn practical tools and skills to help develop well-behaved, happy, and responsible kids. Please RSVP to li***********@il**********.org.

We have some great Alaka’i O Kaua’i bumper stickers and pencils for sale in the front office. They are $2 per sticker; $1 per pencil.

Now that we are in the heart of mud season here at Mount Kahili, please be sure to put an extra change of clothes in your child’s backpack so they are able to change if they get muddy or wet.

We are also happily receiving clothing donations of all sizes/genders for children who do not have extra clothes! Extra shoes/slippers are also welcomed and kept as loaners in the shoe rack right outside the main office.

Please check the Lost and Found right outside the office for any items that may belong to your child. Any items not recovered by Winter Break will be donated to charity or discarded.

Please note that school begins at 8:15 a.m. Please drop your child off by 8:10 a.m. so they make it to class on time. This is very important for the flow of our classroom schedules and their morning meetings.

Similarly, we want to remind you also that dismissal is at 2:25 p.m. Please do not sign your child out early unless absolutely necessary. We also discourage parents arriving early to pick their children and lingering in the corridor outside the classrooms before 2:20 p.m. — this is disruptive to the classes and distracting for our students.

In the interest of safety, please notify your child’s teacher or the office If your child is going home with someone other than the regular parent or carpool driver.  

Please make sure that the valet sign with your child’s name and teacher is located in the upper right-hand corner of your vehicle so that we can easily read it to help facilitate the valet line. If your sign is missing or damaged and you would like a more durable laminated sign, just let us know. We will be happy to give you a new one!

Lastly, please DO NOT park in the front circle, especially during drop-off or pick-up — it creates blockages for the flow of traffic. Parking is to the side of the school building, up by the gym (the less muddy option), or down the hill in the lower parking lot.

Our K-7th learners have been hard at work in the school garden this week in preparation for the Presentation of Learning on Dec. 14. Mr. Jon, our wonderful facilities manager, rototilled the soil, added amendments, and created rows so the ground was ready for our learners to plant seeds and plants. In the months to come, we will be harvesting various types of peppers, onions, lettuce, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, spinach, and herbs.

Linda Krystek, the Interim Director, took Miss Katie’s and Miss Amy’s classes on  walking field trips of our beautiful grounds, where learners discovered tangerines, oranges, bananas, guavas, grapefruit, ginger root, taro, and macadamia nuts growing at Mount Kahili Park. Each learner left with at least one sample of the produce growing here on the property!

We are actively working to expand our school and classroom libraries. We welcome new or gently used children’s books, ranging in level from kindergarten to middle school, of varying topics and genres. We are especially in need of chapter books. Just drop them in the designated box in the library!

The Giving Tree in our front office is to show our appreciation for all the hard work and time our facilitators at Alaka’i O Kaua’i invest with our keiki. In the main office, you will find a Giving Tree with paper ornaments that include teacher’s name and what they may be needing or hoping for in their classrooms. Pick up your ornament today, and please be sure to return it attached to your wrapped gift, to the large wrapped box located by the Giving Tree in main office by no later than Dec. 20th. Please join us in saying thank you to our awesome facilitators!

School photos went home yesterday with our learners. If you ordered photos and did not receive your child’s packet, please let us know.

Our Photo Retake Day has been rescheduled to January 17th (It is no longer on 12/12). If your child was absent on the previous photo day, or you would like a picture retake, please put this date on your calendar. Order forms will be available at the front desk once we return from Winter Break.

Please note that school begins at 8:15 a.m. Please drop your child off by 8:10 a.m. so they make it to class on time. This is very important for the flow of our classroom schedules and their morning meetings.

Similarly, we want to remind you also that dismissal is at 2:25 p.m. Please do not sign your child out early unless absolutely necessary. We also discourage parents arriving early to pick their children and lingering in the corridor outside the classrooms before 2:20 p.m. — this is disruptive to the classes and distracting for our students.

In the interest of safety, please notify your child’s teacher or the office If your child is going home with someone other than the regular parent or carpool driver.  

Please make sure that the valet sign with your child’s name and teacher is located in the upper right-hand corner of your vehicle so that we can easily read it to help facilitate the valet line. If your sign is missing or damaged and you would like a more durable laminated sign, just let us know. We will be happy to give you a new one!

Lastly, please DO NOT park in the front circle, especially during drop-off or pick-up — it creates blockages for the flow of traffic. Parking is to the side of the school building, up by the gym (the less muddy option), or down the hill in the lower parking lot.

Our learners love hanging out together at our school’s buddy bench. A buddy bench is a simple idea to eliminate loneliness and foster friendship on the playground. Alaka’i O Kaua’i wants to spread the message of inclusion and kindness! Girl Scout Troop 823 helped make this possible, and we thank them for this generous gift!

Click here to read The Garden Island’s article!

Alaka’i recently got a shipment of new iPads and Chromebooks for our keiki, thanks to a Walmart Foundation Grant of $32,500. We are so thankful for this generous gift, which has allowed us to purchase some much-needed technology for our school.

Walk into any classroom at Alaka’i O Kaua’i, and you notice something is different. You won’t find learners seated in traditional rows of desks during instruction. Flexible seating helps create a more active, engaged, enthusiastic, and relaxed room of students! This article lists the top ten benefits for incorporating flexible seating into our classrooms.

We have several projects over the Winter Break (after New Year’s Day) around campus. We will be looking for volunteers to help paint, organize, and move furniture. Please let us know if you are willing to pitch in!

Please remember to DRIVE WITH ALOHA! As a community, we all share our school road. Please be mindful of your speed, passing with care (only if necessary), and practice patience in one-lane areas.

We are pleased to announce that our new director, Frederick Birkett, will be joining us this week. Mr. Birkett comes to us with many years of experience as a charter school leader.

Mr. Birkett spent 15 years as a charter school principal in Massachusetts, New York City, and Hawaii. In addition, he has a Master’s Degree in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Fred spent eight years as a Captain in the United States Air Force and is author of two books, The Military Parent’s Guide to Public, Private, and Charter Schools; and Charter Schools: A Parent’s Complete Guide to Public, Private, and Charter Schools.

“I am excited about the opportunity to bring my educational background, as well as my experience as a charter school leader, to help support teachers, students, and families at Alaka`i O Kaua`i Charter School,” he said.

We are so fortunate to have him join the Alaka’i O Kaua’i Ohana!

Miss Frenette’s class is learning how to write friendly letters to their pen pals in Oklahoma.

Do you ever ask your child about how his or her day went and get a one-word answer? Read this article to find out 10 questions that are great conversation starters!

“The trick is to ask about things that are specific, but still open-ended. Move beyond ‘fine’ and ‘nothing’ by asking your child to describe his world.”

Click here to read more.

Please remember to DRIVE WITH ALOHA! As a community, we all share our school road. Please be mindful of your speed, passing with care (only if necessary), and practice patience in one-lane areas.

I love to see learning “al fresco,” as I call it, at Alaka’i O Kaua’i. This week, during my “rounds,” I observed a class doing a writers’ workshop outside under the big tree by the playground, another class solving word problems during math with writing outside under the awnings, and several other classes composting, preparing the soil, and planting new seedlings outside on our beautiful grounds. They even covered the new plants with netting to protect them from the ravenous chickens!

Why is learning outside so important? An article entitled The Benefits of Learning Outside the Classroom states that direct experience outdoors is more motivating and has more impact and credibility.

The results from learning outside the classroom can be instantaneous as well as active and, therefore, impact behavior as well as tap into the learning styles of the more kinesthetic learner.

Through skilled teaching, interpretation or facilitation, learning outside the classroom can readily become a stimulating source of fascination, personal growth and can lead to breakthroughs in learning.

Active learning readily develops the learning skills of inquiry, experiment, feedback, reflection, review, communication, problem solving, an enterprising attitude and cooperative learning.

Quality learning experiences in “real” situations have the capacity to raise achievement across a range of subjects and to develop better personal and social skills. When these experiences are well planned, safely managed, and personalized to meet the needs of every child, they can:

• Improve academic achievement
• Provide a bridge to higher order learning
• Develop skills and independence in a widening range of environments
• Make learning more engaging and relevant to young people
• Develop active citizens and stewards of the environment
• Nurture creativity
• Provide opportunities for informal learning through play
• Reduce behavior problems and improve attendance
• Stimulate, inspire and improve motivation
• Develop the ability to deal with uncertainty
• Provide challenge and the opportunity to take acceptable levels of risk
• Improve young people’s attitudes

Our learners were able to begin MAP testing last week, which will provide valuable information about the skills and concepts they have already mastered and what they are ready to learn next.

Alaka’i O Kaua’i partners with MAP NWEA to assess their learners three times a year. MAP, which is an acronym for Measures of Academic Progress, is used by more than 9 million students in the US and in 140 countries worldwide. MAP is a computer-adaptive test. If your child answers a question correctly, the next question is more challenging. If they answer incorrectly, the next one is easier. This type of assessment challenges top performers without overwhelming students whose skills are below grade level.

MAP generates comprehensive student progress reports that predict projected proficiency on state tests, give a nationally normed percentile rank and projected growth target, as well as detailed information about the child’s strengths and areas of growth. These reports will be shared with parents upon completion of testing at the school. For more information about MAP, please read 12 Questions Parents Ask About the MAP Growth Assessment.

It’s uku (lice) season, and we wanted to share some information from the Hawaii DOE about prevention, identification, and treatment.

The school health practice for ukus will include:

• Inspection by the school health aide of a student who may have ukus;
• Notification of the parent/guardian that the student has ukus;
• ​After the parent is notified, the student will return to class where they will remain until the end of the school day, unless the parent opts to take their child home to begin treatment;
• Provision of information on home treatment to the parent/guardian.

Some tips on managing ukus:

• ​Check your child’s hair at least once a week, and if ukus or nits (eggs) are found, treat promptly. You may call your child’s physician for possible treatment solutions, some of which may be covered by insurance;
• Educate yourself and your child about ukus and how to treat them if they are found — these are the best prevention measures;
• Consider keeping your child’s hair slicked back or tied up to reduce risk of acquiring them.

We will hold our first annual Multicultural Feast on Friday, Nov. 16, at noon. All families are welcome to join us for the festivities. This tradition will be a wonderful way to kick off the Thanksgiving week and allows us to build community and share foods that represent our unique family backgrounds.

Sign up here to volunteer or to bring a main dish, drinks, dessert, or side dish.

Please bring a food dish item that serving at least 6-8 people that best represents the culture in your family to share with our Alaka’i O Kaua’i community! We will set up a feast in each classroom and take our food outside to eat weather permitting. Feel free to represent your family by wearing cultural clothing, Alaka’i O Kaua’i spirit wear, or you can even bring an apron and step in to help serve food!

We had such a fun Halloween at Alaka’i O Kaua’i. The 5th-grade learners put the finishing touches on the Halloween-O-Grams and personally delivered 171 treats to students and staff. Our costume parade started with Miss Casey’s class, and picked up each subsequent class until the whole school was circling the school. It was wonderful seeing so many of our parents and families coming out for our inaugural parade!

The parade then marched up the hill to the field for Trunk or Treating in the shadow of Mt. Kahili! Parents and other volunteers, many in costume, decorated their trunks and passed out treats to our learners. We are so grateful to everyone for making our first Halloween at Alaka’i O Kaua’i such a special day!