WASC
HAIS/WASC Accreditation Mid-Term Progress Report, February 2008
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Excerpts from 2002 WASC Report
Preface
Kamehameha Elementary School (KES) is a K-6 co-educational day program serving 752 students and is a division of the Campus Programs of the Kamehameha Schools system of educational services. Kamehameha Schools was founded by the will of Bernice Pauahi Bishop, the great-granddaughter and last direct royal descendant of Kamehameha the Great. In 1887, three years after her death, the Kamehameha School for Boys opened with 37 students and four teachers. A year later, Kamehameha Schools Preparatory Department, the predecessor of Kamehameha Elementary School, was established to ready younger students for learning at the Boys School. Today, KES is located at the K-12 Kapālama campus overlooking the city of Honolulu on the island of O‘ahu. Kapālama is currently one of three campuses within the state, which together serve more than 3,500 students in kindergarten through grade 12. The Kamehameha Schools system also includes approximately 30 preschools, statewide, serving more than 1,200 students. - WASC 2002
Mission
The mission of Kamehameha Elementary School is “to educate children of Hawaiian ancestry to become good and industrious men and women in spirit, mind, and body to use their talents and abilities to contribute positively to the world.”
This mission is linked to the Kamehameha Middle and High School program, where students from KES continue through grade 12. Together the Kapålama campus schools have reached consensus on a common set of schoolwide learning expectations. In this way, Kamehameha Elementary School fulfills its role within the Kamehameha Strategic Mission which is “to fulfill Pauahi’s desire to create educational opportunities in perpetuity to improve the capability and well-being of people of Hawaiian ancestry.”
These levels of mission and commitment are also aligned with the will of Bernice Pauahi Bishop, which states, “I desire my trustees to provide first and chiefly a good education in the common English branches, and also instruction in morals and in such useful knowledge as may tend to make good and industrious men and women.” - WASC 2002
Educational Program
Kamehameha Elementary School provides a program that addresses the development of the “whole”child. The program provides depth and breadth across curriculum designed to challenge children’s multiple intelligences: linguistic, mathematical-logical, visual-spatial, musical, naturalistic, body-kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. Academic expectations in the core subject areas of language arts and mathematics are relatively advanced to match the academic potential of its student population in these areas. Grade level classroom teachers are responsible for these subjects, as well as social studies, health, and science (sharing instruction with science lab teachers). Extending the intelligences, special subject teachers, with specific expertise in their disciplines, provide instruction in art, computers (lab at upper grades), Hawaiian language and culture, library, music, physical education, and lab science (shared instruction with classroom teachers). At grades five and six all students also receive band instruction. Christian Education and guidance are taught throughout the grade levels and augmented by regular classroom prayer and school-wide chapel services.
Students are given many opportunities to extend and enrich their intelligences. Field trips and guest presentations are regularly organized by grade levels to support their curricular themes. Grade levels and specials align their respective curriculum plans to integrate students’ learning experiences. Teachers and staff also sponsor a wide variety of co- and extra-curricular activities: Student council; open lab times for art and science; gymnastics, dance, jump rope, and juggling for PE; chess club; chorus; jazz band and percussion ensemble, jogging. Many of the children pursue their affiliations in these different areas to relatively high levels of expertise for their ages. - WASC 2002
‘Ike Hawai‘i
Kamehameha Elementary School cultivates, nurtures, perpetuates, and practices ‘Ike Hawai‘i which incorporates values, history, language, oral traditions, literature, music, and dance of the Hawaiian culture through science, art, and social studies curricula, and through grade-level projects, field trips, and school-wide programs. Visitors to KES will likely see teachers using common Hawaiian words and phrases. Hawaiian values are posted on walls and referred to in the course of character education. Students often recite a prayer before lunch in Hawaiian. Groups of teachers meet to study the Hawaiian language.
Two special teachers implement the Hawaiian curriculum across the grades, K-6. The primary goal of the K-3 program is to develop listening, speaking, and cultural awareness through concrete experiences. Students begin to build a vocabulary of Hawaiian words and phrases. Traditional and contemporary Hawaiian literary genre, mele (song), pule (prayer), oli (chant), and mo‘olelo (story) are used to reinforce vocabulary, phrases, and concepts. Some K-3 units include: the Hawaiian Islands, state symbols, family relationships, and an introduction to the lives of Kamehameha I and Bernice Pauahi Bishop.
The 4-6 curriculum encourages students to use the Hawaiian language for a variety of purposes. Unit topics include the Hawaiian alphabet and sound system, Hawaiian protocol and values, genealogy, and the life of Bernice Pauahi Bishop. Activities include singing, chanting, dancing hula, and creating cultural artifacts. In addition to their Hawaiian classes, students have many opportunities to practice ‘Ike Hawai‘i across the curriculum through yearly field trips and camp experiences, as well as integrated units. In second grade students learn about culture by studying specific cultures around the world, one of them being Hawaiian. Hawai‘i is then used as a reference point to which the other cultures are compared. The fourth grade curriculum is centered on ‘Ike Hawai‘i. Topics include island formation, dispersal, Polynesian migration, ‘ohana (family) life within the ahupua‘a (Hawaiian land division), and the Kamehameha dynasty up through the end of Kamehameha V’s reign. Students create artifacts such as ‘ohe hano ihu (bamboo nose flute), and ‘ohe kāpala (traditional bamboo stamp). Students learn traditional Kamehameha School songs, Hawaiian patriotic songs, hīmeni (hymns), and how to play the ‘ukulele
Support for students with special needs – academic, social, emotional, etc. – is provided by three counselors, resource teachers for reading and mathematics, and a speech-hearing specialist. Procedures for special students have been established to guide teachers and staff, ensure consistency, and provide for appropriate levels of intervention according to need. In this area, a current focus has been on staff development to understand and, to the degree possible, accommodate developmental differences. – WASC 2002
