ROD THOMPSON / RTHOMPSON@STARBULLETIN.COM
Hula teacher Maua Puhi prepares students at Kanu O Ka Aina charter school in Waimea, Big Island, for Saturday's Holomua, a "hula drama" showing what they learned during the year.
Big Isle students
thrive in family-style
environmentKanu O Ka Aina's students
form bonds that are lacking
in their home lives
WAIMEA, Hawaii >> Ki Jarvis looks at his schoolmates at Kanu O Ka Aina charter school on the edge of Parker Ranch cattle country and sees smiling faces.
All 150 students, from kindergarten to 12th grade, are preparing their year-end "hula drama" to be performed at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Kahilu Theater in Waimea.
The performance is called Holomua, meaning progress. Guided by Hawaiian culture, the students have indeed made progress, raising themselves several grade levels in a single year, says school director Ku Kahakalau.
Jarvis, 17, knows that's only part of the story.
"These kids are running around with smiles. What they have to deal with at home is just unbearable," he said. "Everybody here is touched by crime. Every kid can tell you stories of 'hardcoreness,' of violence and drugs."
When they come to Kanu O Ka Aina, "they just let it go at the door," he said.
In his own case, Jarvis, one-quarter Hawaiian, the son of divorced parents, attended seven high schools in Washington and Oregon before coming to Kanu O Ka Aina. "My dad moved around a lot," he said.
His record in those schools was "horrible." He wasn't doing anything bad like drugs. He just wasn't doing anything at all. "I felt I was stagnating. I don't think I would have graduated," he said.
At Kanu O Ka Aina, Jarvis has reconnected with Hawaiian culture. "I saw the bridge between the past and the future of Hawaiian culture all at one time. It's breathtaking," he said.
Like Jarvis, 92 percent of Kanu O Ka Aina students have Hawaiian blood, says Kahakalau. Half are from low-income families. Most arrive performing below their grade level.
But this is a school where teachers are called "auntie" and "uncle," a school where Jarvis mentions his "family" and means students and teachers.
At her former school, Kapola Faleao, 13, was depressed. She got good grades, but was teased constantly by other girls. "We took it to the vice principal. She didn't do nothing," Faleao said.
At Kanu O Ka Aina, students are a family, an ohana, Faleao said. "I'm enjoying myself," she said.
Drugs are not only banned at the school, but aren't needed, Kahakalau said. "If you're happy, you don't have to get happier," she said.
No one is left behind. Two students won at the Big Island district science fair in Hilo and went on to the state event in Honolulu, said teacher Maile Naeole. Both are special education students, including Naeole's son Hinano.
Kahakalau began teaching Hawaiian language in public schools in 1985. She knew something was wrong when her students got A's, but the same students got D's and F's in other classes.
Standard American learning methods don't work for many Hawaiians, she realized. The American way is for each student to strive alone. The attitude is, "This is my paper and don't you look."
The Hawaiian way is "us working together," she said.
In 1997, Kahakalau started a school-within-a-school at Honokaa High School. In its third year, a thousand visitors came to see her success. In 2000, she started Kanu O Ka Aina.
In April, Kamehameha Schools awarded $153,603 to the Kanu O Ka Aina through a program to provide financial support to start-up charter schools.
A key to the school's success is that nearly all learning is done in projects.
For example, students don't attend science classes. They study a stream valley in North Kohala learning everything from the stories of people who lived there to the science behind growing taro there.
Five such projects throughout the year are unified in this Saturday's performance of Holomua. It's "based on a true story" adaptation of how a Hana, Maui, chief dreams of a Big Island girl and sends a retainer to find her.
Each of the places the retainer looks is a place the school's students have studied. Holomua provides a dramatized framework for them to show what they have learned.
