Monday message 03.14.2022

Aloha to the good people in the Alaka’i O Kaua’i Charter School learning community. I hope this message finds you all safe, happy, and healthy as we see numerous restrictions being removed in our society.

We greatly appreciate your support of our unique charter school, especially in a reflective lens of the challenges we all faced during the pandemic. One of the great aspects of our school is that people in our learning community came together in unison united by the common value of top quality education for our keiki.

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once penned one of my favorite observations: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.” As you may know, play-based learning is an integral part of our daily life here at Alaka’i O Kaua’i Charter School and having a beautiful remote campus with tons of outdoor play space is an absolute blessing.

Our learners have demonstrated incredible amounts of growth in socio-emotional learning on campus and can be verified by various forms of data. We can cheerfully share that office discipline referrals at recess time have dropped significantly since the 2020-2021 school year. With increased cooperation and problem solving at recess times we have been able to introduce tetherball, Four Square, a slack line, and soccer for our learners to enjoy.

National statistics indicate that the average student experiences conflict every three minutes at recess, and we are keenly engaged in making sure that all of our keiki are happy, safe, and enjoying their play-based learning times at recess. Please do continue to work with us at the school if there are times when issues without our knowledge are not resolved so we can swiftly respond.

We sincerely wish that everyone in our learning community enjoys a spring break filled with friends plus fun, which helps recharge our energy for a strong push in the last quarter of the school year. We look forward to seeing everyone back on campus on Monday, March 21st.

DJ Adams
Po’o Kumu (Director), Alaka’i O Kaua’i Charter School, Koloa, Hawai’i

“Ua ola no i ka pane a ke aloha.”
There is life in a kindly reply.