By Rod Ohira
Advertiser Staff Writer

Walking toward a small cottage classroom on a unique O'ahu high school campus, Dorothy Douthit pauses and points to a bodhi tree.

"It's rumored to be (a descendant) of the one Buddha sat under," said Douthit, who is in her 27th year as head of school at Academy of the Pacific. Her reference is to Siddhartha Gautama's enlightenment, which is said to have occurred after he meditated under a bodhi tree near the village of Gaya in northern India.

Douthit and the bodhi tree complement the learning environment offered to 150 students in grades 6 to 12 on AOP's four-acre 'Alewa Heights campus, which is called a "village of learning."

"Students learn best in a positive, rich environment," said Douthit (pronounced DOW-thit). "Our curriculum is flexible enough to meet the needs of students rather than students being fitted into a curriculum."

Dorothy Douthit, head of school of Academy of the Pacific, had studied to be a concert pianist. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

"I used to go to Dr. D's office just to visit and talk," said McGuire. A lecturer in Hawaiian studies and Hawaiian language at Kapi'olani Community College, McGuire graduated from the Kamehameha Schools after attending AOP from the seventh through ninth grades. "She's always interested in chatting with students.

"Dr. D sets the environment that makes it conducive for students and teachers to interact," McGuire said. "With her, it's not a top-down kind of thing. I think her commitment to keeping classes small and her warm expression for students makes her unique. As the person in charge who sets a tone, she is AOP in a lot of ways."

Roderick McPhee, president emeritus of Punahou School and the head of the Samuel and Mary Castle Foundation, said, "You've got to have an endless reservoir of patience to do what she does."

"Her caring and concern carries over to all the people there," McPhee said. "The students know if they hang in there, she'll hang in there with them."

Douthit's relationship with students and their parents starts with one-hour, one-on-one interviews. "The minute I meet with them, we set goals," she said. "I want to make sure that everyone here wants to be here."

Douthit remembers names and faces, stories that go with them and, more importantly, the special needs of each student at AOP. She can recall students who were at the school nearly three decades ago, when it was known as Honolulu Junior Academy in Nu'uanu before the move to 'Alewa Heights in 1984.

"The satisfaction of this job is the feeling that we've made a difference in the lives of kids," Douthit said of the AOP faculty and curriculum. "We see it when they come back to visit with their spouses and hand out business cards."

It costs $11,200 a year to attend AOP, which specializes in assisting students having trouble attaining their learning potential in the structured system of a big school. "We've had the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor," Douthit said.

Each student has a story and she knows them all. One hundred percent of AOP graduates attend college, Douthit said. Among them are a girl who lived in a tent for five years with her mother and a boy bullied in public school whose parents worked three jobs each to send him to AOP.

One of her favorite success stories is of a girl who was being treated for depression caused by poor performance in school. "When we got her in the eighth grade, her reading level was fifth grade," Douthit said. "Once we got her reading level up, she was working at the advanced placement level." The girl is attending college on an academic scholarship, Douthit said.

A 64-year-old native of Waterville, Minn., Douthit never imagined her dream job would be in education.

While studying to be a concert pianist in Europe, she broke both her hands in an April 1958 car accident in Spain. "It turned out to be a blessing," she said. "I'm definitely a people person and being a concert pianist would have meant a more solitary life."

Because she could speak German, Douthit decided to become a language teacher. In 1966, she was recruited in New York to teach German at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. "I was told there was a thriving German community here," she recalled. "When I came, I found no German community, not even a German restaurant."

Douthit taught for a year and took time off to consider her career direction. "My passion was helping people learn," she said. "Teaching is part of it but setting the environment for learning is a bigger part."

Together with Jean Coffman, Darius Amjadi, Roger Watson, Philip Whitesell and Kellett Min, Douthit founded Hale Mohala school in 1969. Classes for 60 students were held at Church of the Crossroads. She headed the Model Cities program in Kalihi-Palama from 1969 to 1974 before becoming Honolulu Junior Academy's top administrator in 1975.

Anthony Ramos, principal of the high school at Kamehameha and a member of AOP's board of trustees for 20 years, said Douthit's empathy for students who need a little more care than traditional schools can offer makes AOP a special place. "She addresses the fact that kids are different and not all kids fit the same box," Ramos said.