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WAILUKU >> Brains and winning are all in the Jachowski family on Maui. Maui family seems
to specialize in academic
excellence and winningThe parents say supporting their
children's interests is key to their successBy Gary T. Kubota
gkubota@starbulletin.comConsider this:
>> Mother Maile Jachowski won two State Science Fairs while a student at Kamehameha Schools in the mid-1970s and was Hawaii's Junior Miss in 1977.
>> The oldest Jachowski son, Matthew, won the state Spelling Bee in 1999 while attending Kalama Intermediate School.
>> Son Nicholas, a Maui High School freshman, was a member of the U.S. team that took first place in the Fifth International Geographic Olympiad in Vancouver, Canada.
>> A third son, Daniel, an eighth-grader at Kalama Intermediate, represented Maui in the statewide Math Counts competition on Oahu last month.
>> This year, Matthew and Nicholas were on the Maui High School team that took first place in the State Science Bowl and will be representing Hawaii on May 3-6 at the National Science Bowl in Washington, D.C.
Maile Jachowski has passed down her experience in academic competitions, working with her husband Doug to raise a family of academically gifted children -- most of them attending public schools.
"It built confidence," said Jachowski, a pediatrician on Maui, an experience she says that helped to broaden her knowledge and increase her interest in learning. "It built self-reliance."
Maile and Doug Jachowski said they place less emphasis on grades and more on supporting their children in their interests, whether it's sports, music or academics. The accomplishments grow out of those pursuits.
"We basically let them do what they want to do," said Doug, an engineering consultant who works at home.
Being involved in their children's pursuits is not an easy task, especially when there are five of them.
Doug Jachowski said he and Maile spend hours daily driving their children to activities and helping them with their homework.
Besides participating in high school track, Matthew, 16, and Nicholas, 14, play in the school band. Nicholas, his 10-year-old brother Joey and 9-year-old sister Holly are taking piano lessons.
Joey plays seasonal Little League baseball, and Holly also is a member of a hula halau.
Recently, Doug has been driving Matthew a couple days a week to the Maui Research and Technology Park in Kihei to participate in a student intern program in astronomy.
Maile is helping the freshmen on the Maui High School team prepare for the biology portion of the National Science Bowl competition.
The Jachowskis said while their younger children Joey and Holly attend Kamehameha Schools in Upcountry Maui, the family is pleased with the results of sending their three older sons to public schools.
Doug Jachowski said he attended public schools in Arizona before going to Stanford University in California and sees benefits in a public education.
"You go to school with a wider range of people, more like your community, people with broader interests," he said.
"Maybe you have to try harder to get what you want out of the system. Maybe that's good. Everything is not handed to you. You have to work for it. I think that's more like real life."
Jachowski said public school teachers on Maui have also been willing to work with their sons to find a way of providing additional instruction.
He said his oldest son Matthew, a junior, wanted to take a college-level biology class in his senior year that was unavailable at Maui High and has been invited to sit in a class at Baldwin High School, where a teacher offers the course.
Maile Jachowski said she remembers the way her parents Leinaala and Robert Apau Jr. of St. Louis Heights spent hours helping her with projects, including building a smoke tunnel for a science project.
"He taught me how to weld," she said. "It was really cool."
Maile said the experience helped to develop a closer relationship with her parents, who are both teachers, and she and Doug have tried to foster a similar relationship with their children.
Science Bowl team coach Edwin Ginoza, a retired Maui High chemistry teacher, said he doesn't know why the Jachowskis' older sons have done better academically than many other students.
But he knows Maile and Doug spend a lot of time with their children.
"They're there when the kids need them," Ginoza said.