Monday message 09.13.2021

Director’s Message

Aloha to the good people in the Alaka’i O Kaua’i Charter School learning community. We hope this message finds you in good happiness and health. We settled back into another good week on campus after the Labor Day long weekend complete with our SBAC Celebration Day on Friday.

Mahalo to many of you for your kind words of encouragement after we shared the outstanding results on the 2020-2021 state of Hawaii SBAC (Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium) state tests. We are extremely proud of our learners for their efforts, the facilitators for their excellent expertise, and the staff for the support of this success. We should also recognize all the ohana for making sure there was plenty of sleep during the assessment times, the PTN (Parent Teacher Network) for financial support of incentives, and to the Board of Directors for their vision and governance.

This week we would also like to highlight that Alaka’i O Kaua’i Charter School is a place that focusses on socio-emotional learning for our keiki. Last year, we saw a significant improvement on our Panorama Survey results which tracks satisfaction in the area of socio-emotional learning. This survey will be coming out again in the next few weeks.

The photos shared from the school this week highlights some key areas that clearly demonstrates our commitment to this vital learning. We are pleased to show two photos from the current Grade Three class teaching “The Leader in Me” song and actions to the Kindergarten class. This creative video was made last school year by the then Grade Two class and Ms. Joeanne and can be found on our website. The video, song and actions all teach the Seven Habits which is an integral part of the culture of our school. We love seeing examples of our learners becoming facilitators and teaching other learners on campus.

Sharing thoughts about a book that you love to read is another example of socio-emotional learning. Keiki here routinely share their ideas, observations, and thoughts about their own learning with others for greater enhancement of knowledge. This action is essential for the development of strong project-based learning where learners explore their own educational path. Check out the wonderful start by our Grade Six learners with their project board asking a guiding question of “How Do Animals React in Zero Gravity?”

Recess and lunch are also key times on campus for our keiki to develop their socio-emotional skills in a friendly learning environment. Play-based learning is embraced at Alaka’i O Kaua’i Charter School as our keiki grow to develop their character traits. We are extremely pleased to share that discipline referrals to the office are significantly down this school year as are bus incident reports from Akita Transportation.

We have also introduced a student message board on campus in which our keiki are encouraged to share their socio-emotional ideas with others. This board is located in the foyer heading into Main Campus and replaced the space vacated when we moved the Project-Based Learning Board to the other side of the office. It is great to see that the learners have recognized the importance of another area of socio-emotional learning on campus which is treating nature with kindness and respect. As you may know we are blessed to have an abundance of animals on campus including goats.