With just 18 students in grades 9 through 12 — and a first-ever graduating class of six seniors this spring — the private alternative high school Ho'omana Hou High on Moloka'i offers a unique choice for high school students on the Friendly Isle.

The school has only two teachers. No motto, colors, mascot or nickname. And definitely no football team.

What it does have is a family atmosphere where peer pressure wanes along with the constant competition to be cool.

It's run by the Moloka'i Community Services Council, which also operates a preschool for 20 children, the island's only youth center and a commercial incubator kitchen that produces sweet potato chips and Moloka'i poi, among other top island products.

"It's a smaller school, and the social skills are really well-defined, like a family," said U'ilani Lima, one of the school's two teachers, along with Elizabeth Poepoe-Lawrence.

"There's no big social pressures within the school like there are in bigger schools. They may have it outside, but not within the classroom. ... And because we're small, we're mobile enough to do things all together, like taking the entire student body to career days on O'ahu."

What Ho'omana Hou has done is step into a void on the island to offer an alternative for students struggling in mainstream education. And with scores on standardized tests available for comparison this year, students have all seen improvements, said Principal Karen Holt, who is also executive director of the Moloka'i Community Services Council.

"We were working to create a new alternative campus," said Holt.

The school holds classes in the same space as the youth center, with students seated at their own computer console for a top-notch, e-based curriculum called Plato in core subjects that gives students the flexibility to move at their own pace.

"They can sit down at a computer at whatever level they are and just start working their way up," said Holt.

Along with the e-curriculum in science, math, history, English and social studies, the school has one "classroom without walls" day each week spent at beachside property loaned by Kamehameha Schools so students can study both science and Hawaiian culture. The inter-tidal field is littered with pohaku (rocks) and a wealth of sea creatures, said Lima. Currently, students are doing ahupua'a mapping of the history and uses of the land.

"These kids are making exceptional progress," said Holt. "I asked them, 'How many of you were planning to go to college before you came here?' and no one was. And I asked them that again recently and all of them raised their hands."

Holt has seen huge leaps in academic accomplishment in her small student body. An example: A number of students have raised their levels in English and math as much as four grades in a year.

Holt feels one of the secrets of success is a program called "The Golden Triangle," created by Jim Harstad, a former UH Lab School teacher now retired. It incorporates a lot of reading aloud by teacher and students to give the young people a love of literature. It also involves students diagramming sentences and "journaling" about what they've read. Students must write 500 words a day. One word less and they risk an F, said Holt.

"Even the most challenged readers are seeing significant progress," said Holt.

The school has also had help from a former dean of the Stanford University College of Education who has visited the school on Moloka'i several times and is working to help them use their environmental surroundings to strengthen the science curriculum.

"I think the strength for our kids is it's one-on-one," said teacher Lima. "Some work really well independently on the computer, and some need hands-on, and this school gives both."