LIHU‘E — The Strategies for Life Program is a program that engages students to be successful in the decisions they make, and to plan their path for success, teachers in the Waimea High School program said in an e-mail. A
LIHU‘E — The Strategies for Life Program is a program that engages students to be successful in the decisions they make, and to plan their path for success, teachers in the Waimea High School program said in an e-mail.
A trio of teachers, including Dave Bown, Ginny Hori (of the Peer Education Program, or PEP), and others engage the students to reach for their potential through class activities, guest speakers, and community projects.
Bown teaches life skills, time management, ideas for starting a business, investing and how to give a presentation to a group of people.
The program creates an atmosphere of positive attitudes, stresses team-building skills and focuses on the well being and future success of students, making them feel that they are unique and have worth in life.
They are taught the process of implementing a project that will use the various skills learned within the sessions. The culminating projects include publishing a cookbook, conducting a beautification project at the school and publishing an emergency map for the island of Kaua‘i.
Within the classes each student in assigned to one of the three culminating projects. Throughout the semester they have been planning, and will soon implement the projects, teachers said in a press release.
Evaluation is done four times throughout the sessions, to get an idea how much the students have used skills learned within the sessions.
The campus-beautification project includes the area in front of the office, stage area, and behind the sculpture area, and is a year old this month.
In front of the office, students made a flower garden to honor the Class of 2009 that includes a helmet, lei, and the word “IMUA” (“forward” in Hawaiian) out of flowers and low scrubs.
At the stage area, laua‘e fern and white hibiscus have been planted. Behind the sculpture, students have created a solitude area with rock, flowers and benches.
The cookbook includes student recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, pupu and dessert, a section on healthy eating, with coupons, time-management tips and Strategies for Life skills added to the mix.
The cookbook will be advertised on a website and sold to generate money for the school.
Students working to publish the emergency map have worked to find physical addresses and contact persons and numbers for all emergency services on the island, with icons, ledger and booklet all part of the map.
Emergency services include Kaua‘i Police Department, Kaua‘i Fire Department, hospitals, clinics, amateur radio operators, radio stations, American Red Cross, Federal Emergency Management Agency, state Civil Defense and others.
Also included in the map are tsunami-inundation zones (tidal wave), shelter locations and more.
