WAIMEA, Hawai'i — Kanu o ka 'Aina's library and its cramped space for language arts instruction were fashioned out of two old shipping containers.

Some of the charter school's main campus classrooms are in tents, and the rest are housed in half of a warehouse loaned to the school by the University of Hawai'i's College of Tropical Agriculture.

The main campus is on space at the college's Lalamilo Research Station, and Kanu's administration operates from an old three-bedroom caretaker's house.

The humble facilities forced the school to cap enrollment at 125, and now there is a waiting list of about a dozen students trying to get in.

Something is happening here, and Big Island parents are hearing about it.

Students who were left far behind in more conventional schools have leaped ahead by multiple grade levels in their reading abilities, said school director Ku Kahakalau. All seven of the school's spring graduates went on to college or other higher education, she said.

She also points to other accomplishments such as the three children's books that were written by current or former students and are being published by Kamehameha Schools' Press, and an annual hula drama so powerful it leaves some spectators in tears.

Between 92 percent and 94 percent of the students are part Hawaiian, and Kahakalau said instruction is driven by the "pedagogy of aloha," a term coined by school staff to describe an approach to education based on Hawaiian traditions.

For example, expectations for student behavior are reinforced through Hawaiian proverbs. Group work is stressed over individual work, acknowledging the "affiliation orientation" in Hawaiian culture that differs from the "achievement orientation" of Western culture, she said.

Kanu also is helped along by millions of dollars in research and educational grants the school has been able to tap, and a partnership with Kamehameha Schools under which Kamehameha provides technical support and a dollar of funding for every $4 provided by the state Department of Education.

"What the kids say is the difference is aloha. They say for the first time, somebody cares about them, and that's the part that's so exciting," Kahakalau said. "The magic bullet is a really, really easy thing in some ways. It's really the personal attention grounded in a cultural way of interacting, giving them their culture, make them proud of who they are."

Standardized test scores are not stellar, but they are steadily improving, she said. But Kahakalau worries the school is being judged on the performance of students who have just arrived at Kanu after years of struggling in conventional public schools.

"We thought our measuring stick would be the students that started with us in kindergarten in 2000," she said. "That should be what we should be accountable for, not a 10th-grader who comes to us from the DOE with third-grade reading levels and then takes the test, and (then the system concludes that) it's our fault that he's not reading at 10th grade. And that's happening right now.

"We just feel that we need more time."

The school is preparing for a $25 million capital drive to pay for construction of new facilities on 30 acres of Hawaiian Home Lands in Waimea.

What are you most proud of? Ongoing growth of students and staff academically and culturally as a result of a research-based "pedagogy of aloha."

Best-kept secret: Kahakalau said Kanu is home to the only Hawai'i public school students to be published professionally. School projects enable students to write and illustrate bilingual books about Hawai'i using the expertise of local artists and writers.

Everybody at our school knows: Everybody, and we relate to each other as an 'ohana.

Our biggest challenge: Procuring funding to finish our multimedia laboratory.

What we need: Tutors and volunteers to help us get struggling readers up to grade level.

Special events: Annual Hula Drama in May, involving all students in grades K-12. This comprehensive ho'ike shares with parents and the public what students have learned throughout the school year as part of their assessment.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton @honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.