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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, July 28, 2005

Staff helps military children face up to challenges

By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer

Mokapu Elementary School principal Larry Biggs says his pupils, all from military families, carry a "very heavy burden" and yet they persevere. The ceramic mural behind Biggs, created by Mokapu schoolchildren, pays tribute to the armed forces.

Jeff Widener | The Honolulu Advertiser

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Mokapu Elementary on Marine Corps Base Hawai'i has some challenges that schools in civilian neighborhoods don't: The 800-plus children are all from Navy and Marine Corps families that could face deployment at any time.

That means the children live with uncertainty and sometimes act out their anxieties in school. It means that teachers and the principal, Larry Biggs, need to be alert not just to the academic challenges their pupils face, but the emotional ones as well.

"My first week here, we had a little boy who never misbehaves who was kicking the daylight out of everyone in reach," remembers Biggs of his introduction to the school four years ago. "He knew that the next day his dad was leaving and he knew if he was bad enough he'd be sent home."

Biggs called the father, who was there in a flash, understood the situation and had his son spend the rest of the day with him.

"That child just flew to his back and stayed there for dear life. He wanted to spend what time he could with Dad."

But the challenges facing the Windward O'ahu school are also its strengths, Biggs said.

"It's a very heavy burden they carry and yet they do," he said of his pupils. "They're persevering. ... That's an inherent trait they have which I think comes from what their parents do. They're ready to lay down their life for our way of life."

What are you most proud of? "Our kids. They come from very diverse backgrounds and yet their commonality is the fact that Mom and Dad or sometimes both, at a week's notice, may have to tell the kids, 'I have to be gone for an indefinite period.' And a lot of times they may be going to a place where they're really in harm's way," Biggs said.

Best-kept secret? All the community service projects the pupils participate in. In the past year they've raised $2,000 for Make a Difference Day, $250 for the Leukemia Foundation, $900 for tsunami relief and $700 for Jump Rope for Heart, and made about 800 lei for returning servicemen, particularly those who don't have family waiting for them in Hawai'i.

And the fundraising efforts are often through penny drives.

"We've made trips and trips and trips to the bank with penny buckets," said Biggs.

Everybody at our school knows: Betty Hemmings, fourth-grade teacher who retired after being here for many years. "She loved the kids, she loved what she was doing. She just got along with everybody. For our PTA she was the one responsible for getting 100 percent of staff participation to pay their dues and join up."

Our biggest challenge: AYP — Making the Annual Yearly Progress goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. "We are fine in reading, but our kids struggle with the math," Biggs said. Targeted tutoring and a math summer school program for struggling kids will now go schoolwide.

"Now this year everyone can get extra help regardless of where they stand," Biggs said. "If they need help, they can get it."

What we need: Four more teachers. "Right now we're short," he said, and school starts Aug. 24.

Special events: The Make a Difference Day fund drive, involvement with a traditional makahiki celebration on the base in October, a winter concert in December that fills the 600-seat theater two nights in a row, a spring talent show usually performed on stage at Windward Mall with about 40 children participating, a ho'ike May Day-style ceremony the PTA board hopes to have near the close of the school year, and two book fairs, one in November and the other in March.