At La'ie Elementary, there's nothing wrong with a little dirt under your fingernails.

If you look behind the school's B building during recess, any number of second- or third-grade students can be found weeding or watering plants at Kawahiola (The Place of Life), a community garden started last school year to help students learn math and science.

The students are part of a school-community integrated teaching project called Na Lima Hana o na Pua o La'ie — The Working Hands of the Children of La'ie .

"We started talking about different ways that children learn and wanted an authentic environment for them to learn in so that they're not only learning in an abstract way in the classroom, but they can go out and do problem-solving out in a space where it's very real," said Cynthia Compton, a parent and avid gardener who helped launch the program.

Sandwiched between a classroom building and a Brigham Young University-Hawai'i faculty housing development, the garden was once the forgotten backyard of the school, home to weeds and unraked leaves.

Today, the space holds an herb garden tucked near a new white entrance gate, butterfly-enticing flowers, a section for native Hawaiian plants and several miniature cornfields, rows carefully measured using popsicle sticks and string.

Grow boxes assembled and installed by parent volunteers hold the beginnings of a vegetable garden.

STICKING TO STANDARDS

"One of our concerns is that there are so many different learning styles, that this focus on the test (under the federal No Child Left Behind Act) is taking away the ability of many children to learn," said Compton.

At Kawahiola, students apply the concepts they learn in class by measuring out plots, mixing fractions of ingredients to create soil, and even planting using different cultural techniques.

"I think a lot of the kids, they get so much paper and pencil that they don't always make connections," said Yvonne Ah Sue, a third-grade teacher whose class first started the project.

"What this really does is it takes your traditional word problem and makes it real," she said.

Ah Sue, Compton and second-grade teachers Linda Sao and Sue Ellen Orian are in the process of making sure each lesson complies 100 percent with the Hawai'i Content and Performance Standards for their grade levels.

"I think in the long run it ends up turning learning into higher-level thinking. It takes the curriculum, and it links it to the student, and it makes sense," said Ah Sue.

COMMUNITY INVOLVED

Once the project was approved by La'ie Elementary principal Deborah Voorhies, Ah Sue and Compton — an adjunct assistant professor of history at nearby Brigham Young University-Hawai'i — acquired funding for materials and plants from the school and BYUH.

Parent volunteers constructed grow boxes and helped to clear the weeds, while community members shared their farming expertise with teachers and students.

"It was a lot of work. BYU has helped out a lot," said Compton.

"We're hoping to bring more people in, with their expertise in planting and volunteer work, so that it's a place where the community can focus on strengthening and building up the children," she said.

After writing a grant proposal for more funding this year, Compton hopes that the project — what she calls a "marvelous collaboration" between school and community — becomes sustainable in the long term.

"That's what we want, to bring people in so that it becomes a place where people of different cultures can learn from each other," said Compton. "And the children love it back there. There's life, there's laughter."

"This may sound a little cliche," added Ah Sue, "but it's a place where we want to invite life."

Reach Caryn Kunz at ckunz1@honoluluadvertiser.com.