First lesson in sun safety: Wear your hat
By Katherine Nichols
Advertiser Staff Writer
The fashion accessory may seem new to the children at Iolani School, but it might remind their parents of a certain white hat worn by Gilligan on TV a few decades ago.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
Out in Honolulu's tropical sun at 10:45 a.m., however, the aloha print, black and white hat with a red letter "I" on the front is not just about fun and fashion. Iolani is among the few island schools — maybe the only one — to add a hat to a school uniform for health's sake.
Iolani students sport the new school hat worn to protect skin during P.E. classes.
As 7-year-old Micah Lau explains with the authority of a physician, they are "to protect us from the sun."
The second-graders tend to wear their hats just as the design intended, unlike many of the third grade boys, who transform the malleable material into accessories more appropriate for cowboys, sailors, baseball players or pirates.
Laurie White, a science educator at Iolani and the person behind the optional addition to the lower-school physical-education uniforms, believes that "lifelong health habits" are essential parts of any curriculum. This is why she includes sun safety in her classroom lessons.
The hat idea blossomed when she and Beth Burda, the director of health education at Iolani, realized that their preach was stronger than their practice. They were sending children out to P.E. unprotected. So they joined forces with student council members, asked one dermatologist about the most effective design, talked with the owner of Diamond Head Wear about producing the hat at a low cost, and created something that would foster school spirit and sun safety.
Wearing an adult version, White pointed out that "these children are more at risk than we were because of the thinning ozone layer." And, she added, 80 percent of an individual's sun damage occurs before age 18. That's motivation enough for many. But really, what could be better than simultaneously protecting your skin and looking like a pirate?
