Fall Focus: Aloha 'Aina

While the Voyager keiki continued their fall break, our teachers and admin spent Monday and Tuesday immersed in professional development around place-based, project-based learning, or PBL. On Tuesday, we visited Waikalua Loko I'a, a 400-year old fishpond in Kane'ohe (photos above and below). In partnership with the Pacific American Foundation (PAF) and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa's STEM pre-Academy program, we learned how the engineering design process, along with Hawaiian ancestral knowledge, can be used to solve problems specific to our islands and relevant to the issues facing our globe, while providing our keiki with a rigorous learning experience in the process.

Our exploration into this type of learning grew out of demand on the part of teachers last year to learn about relevant ways to tie science and social studies curriculum together with real-world issues facing our island communities. While many charter schools in Hawai'i were founded on this approach as their instructional focus, it is a bit new to Voyager, and teachers are embracing the chance to get "hands-on" with some authentic place-based learning. The experience immediately sparked calls for Voyager vans to bring our students to local venues for place-based learning (we're working on this!), and to apply place-based and design strategies back "home," on Voyager's campus and around our neighborhood. We look forward to the potential partnerships that this two-day experience inspired, and are committed to supporting our teachers and students as they find ways to expand learning beyond the four walls of the classroom.

In other news, our recent StriveHI academic achievement report was published late last month. We are happy to say that we are meeting our academic targets according to the state's measures in all three tested subjects, and that we brought our rate of chronic absenteeism down significantly last year. Thank you, Voyager families, for providing the support needed for our students to perform well, realizing our founding vision of enthusiasm and performance steadily rising, and remaining at a high level. Two areas that warrant extra attention as a focus for improvement are our rate of improvement in math, which we'd like to accelerate, and performance in both ELA and math by our high-needs students. An "achievement gap" persists at Voyager, as it does in many public and private schools across the nation, between students who require additional support--due to income, English language proficiency, or specific learning challenges, and the median, or "average," Voyager student. Some charts highlighting the results are included below. The full report can be viewed here.

It is worth noting that while we are a standards-based school, Voyager does not place a great emphasis on standardized test scores, and treat these numbers as one indicator among many measures of student success. We evaluate the quality of our program using multiple indicators, and are constantly seeking more authentic means of assessing our student learning goals by subject, by class, and school-wide. Most importantly, we place the highest value on students' ability to self-assess and reflect upon their learning, taking responsibility for setting their own goals for growth and improvement. We look forward to having you join them in their exhibition of learning at Student-Led Portfolio Conference Day on November 9th.

Sincerely,

Evan Anderson, Trisha Donaldson, and the entire Voyager PCS Staff

Keiki Water Safety Initiative: Grade 1 & 2 Mission Accomplished!

Our students in first and second grades in Mr. Fujihara, Mrs. Ralleta and Mrs. B's classes completed the Keiki Water Program fully funded by a grant through the Hawaii Aquatics Program. The development of the aquatic safety education program is in response to drowning being the leading cause of accidental death of children 1 to 15 years of age in Hawaii– motor vehicle accidents (occupants and pedestrians combined) are second. Further, 96% of fatal childhood drownings in our state are Hawaiian residents, meaning our keiki account for nearly all of the child drownings in local pools, streams, and ocean. The “Keiki Water Safety and Learn-to-Swim Curriculum” is divided into two five-week sessions with two lessons per week. The ten-lesson curriculum includes two classroom-based water safety lessons and eight 25-minute in-pool swim lessons. A huge mahalo to our families for supporting this program and great thanks to our local Kanewai Community Swimming Pool for making this possible for our students. You can learn more about this amazing opportunity at https://hawaiiaquaticsacademy.org/ .

Mahalo to our Morning Volunteers! More Help Welcome!

Thank you to our MVP (Most Valuable Parent) volunteers who have stepped up to help supervise play from 7:30am-7:45am on our makai side play structure yard! We could still use a couple more hands each day greeting students curbside and helping the younger ones with unloading during this time.

If you are available to help our keiki exit their vehicles safely, please email Principal Evan Anderson at eanderson@voyagerpcs.com with your preferred days. Or just show up and offer to lend a hand. Mahalo!

Field Trip A$$i$tance Available

If your household cash flow is having a hard time keeping up with the number of field trips your child is scheduled to go on this year, help is available! The Joyce Lynn Kimura Kokua Fund provides assistance in amounts up to $10 for field trips, as long as the request is submitted one week prior to the permission form due date. Application can be found here.

For more expensive field trips (overnights, off-island, etc), financial assistance in larger amounts is also available now through a grant from the Hawai'i Community Foundation. Requests for help from this fund should be submitted in writing to Principal Evan Anderson in the Voyager office, at least one week in advance of the permission form due date.

Join the PTSO!

Come by the office and pick up a membership form to support our parent-teacher-student organization in its mission to improve the learning community at Voyager! $10 for individual membership, $20 for family membership (2 or more keiki). Two of the PTSO's upcoming events are listed below.

Important Dates:

November brings with it a hodge-podge of days off, some of which are specific to Voyager and deserve special mention. Thank you in advance for paying close attention to the Voyager calendar. Please contact Kama'aina Kids at 285-8511 for information about care on teacher work days and student-led conference day.

• Monday, November 5th: No School (Teacher Work Day)
• Tuesday, November 6th: No School (Election Day)
• Friday, November 9th: Student Led Conferences and Book Fair (Attendance required--conference only; no regular classes)
• Monday, November 12th: No School (Veteran's Day Observed)
• Wednesday, November 21st-Friday, November 23rd: No School (Thanksgiving Holiday)

or HEAD on down to HISAM!

Upcoming Events: Bullying Prevention Month and Free Music