Posted on: Friday, April 1, 2005

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

Wayne Watanabe's students are bummed.

"It's hard. The kids are telling me they want to go with me to Kaua'i."

He's actually contemplating just that.

For the past six years, Watanabe has headed up an innovative alternative learning program for the Department of Education.

Ko 'Apopo 'Ohana Academy takes in failing students from Kaiser, Kalani, Kaimuki, Roosevelt and McKinley High schools. The program is small, just 17 students this year, and emphasizes project-based learning, individualized attention and — most importantly, according to Watanabe — aloha for the students.

"Without love, nothing can happen," he says. "These kids are good kids. They just need some attention."

Watanabe was formerly the principal of Kapa'a High on Kaua'i, his alma mater. As a student, he was an at-risk kid himself. It was renowned Hawai'i educator Gladys Brandt, principal at Kapa'a at the time, who saved him. She was not one to let struggling students slip through the cracks or slip away. Brandt convinced him he wasn't dumb and gave him a swift kick toward college.

Watanabe never forgot her example.

He's had great success with the Ko 'Apopo program, graduating 90 percent of the kids who came to him with terrible grades and barely-there attendance. At Ko 'Apopo, the kids show up for class, they learn, they're challenged and they throw off their definition of themselves as "losers."

At a year-end presentation last May, the Ko 'Apopo students gave speeches on detailed research projects like "The Effects of Media on Society" and "Watershed Preservation." The students also talked about how Mr. Watanabe took them on field trips, played fierce Friday afternoon volleyball matches, and believed so completely in their ability to learn that they came to believe in themselves.

But he is leaving.

Watanabe's wife, Kathleen, the state human resources director, will be sworn in as a new Kaua'i Circuit Court judge this summer. Watanabe will stay with Ko 'Apopo through the summer term, then move back home to Kaua'i.

"I would love to put an alternative-learning program on Kaua'i where kids could come from around the state. A boarding program. A lot of kids don't have stable homes. If I could get them out of those homes, work with them, then by their senior year, I could hook them up with the community college and get them slated for some kind of job."

Watanabe talks about "maybe taking it easy now" but his mission as an educator keeps drawing him back into the fray.

"My former students come up to me and tell me, 'Mister, I'm good now. I'm behaving. I'm married. I have kids now.' And that's the biggest reward for me."

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-8172.