OUR SCHOOLS • 'AIKAHI ELEMENTARY
Putting art in classroom and the classroom in art

First-grade teacher Laurie Amai helps pupils with their Mona Lisas. From left: Katerina Walter, Tommy Lengerke, Zoey Kalahiki and Lauren Bondad. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Windward O'ahu Writer

KAILUA — Art permeates the campus at 'Aikahi Elementary School, greeting visitors as they enter the grounds and surrounding them on walls, stairwells, restrooms and breeze ways wherever they go.

Inlaid volcanoes decorate benches, cement sculptures of endangered species perch on rocks and stained-glass stepping stones decorate a garden area. A huge colorful mosaic of a marsh covers one outside wall of the cafeteria and a smaller mural depicting symbols in tile greets students as they enter the lunch room.

The works were done by students as part of the school's integrated environmental education curriculum in which teachers and professional artists use art, both the visual and performing, as vehicles to enhance and enrich the educational process.

The parents support this concept and through the PTA pay to have a music teacher at the school.

"The art here is not just art for art's sake," said principal Roberta Tokumaru. "It's all integrated with our curriculum."

Still the school, which holds two national Blue Ribbon awards for excellence in education, is quite proud of its art and has even won a 1997 award from the Hawai'i Alliance for Arts for having so much of it on campus.

This week at the Annual Curriculum Fair, the school and students are showcasing just how useful art is in learning and fulfilling the state's education standards. Every teacher on campus is teaching to the standards, Tokumaru said.

"You can go into all the classrooms and see the lessons are geared to the standards," she said.

The public showing, using the entire cafeteria, includes an ocean scene with whales and fish, a rainforest tree and a savanna. Students have created books about the United States and about geography which are among the hundreds of pieces representing their best efforts for the year so far. Each of the 640 students selects two or three items for display.

The fair has been among the school's annual events for 19 years, as long as Tokumaru has been principal there. When she retires this year, she will leave behind a legacy of environmental studies at the school, which is neighbor to a wastewater treatment plant and the Marine Corps Base Hawai'i's Nu'upia Pond.

Since the school is surrounded by these high-profile areas of environmental concern, it sought a consultant's help to develop a curriculum incorporating the concepts of water, pollution, the land, culture and technology, she said.

The school also has a character education program that she said helps students develop and reinforce values of respect, responsibility, caring, fairness, self-discipline and trustworthiness.

• Best kept secret: "Our philosophy that focuses on the belief in multiple intelligence," Tokumaru said. "We believe that every child excels in some area, so we really work to provide for this."

The school also helps its students excel physically, and for the past three years, 'Aikahi has taken first place in fitness in its district.

• Everybody knows: Gay Iijima, school health aide, who has been at the school longer than the principal.

• Most pressing need: More rooms. While the school would like music and art rooms, it would be happy just to have more classrooms.

• Recent school project: A U.S. flag made with 1,001 cranes after the terrorist attacks on the United States. In December the flag was presented to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld by Adm. Dennis Blair, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific.

To get your school profiled, contact education editor Dan Woods at dwoods@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5441.