Words Matter

As mission statements go in the process of development, each word is considered carefully. Ideas, concepts, values are packed into a mission statement, and so words matter. Our revised mission statement begins with this idea: to create a place of belonging…

So let’s begin this yearʻs first blog by unpacking what “a place of belonging” means for us at Mid-Pacific.

We can retrace our earliest beginnings as a school and learn that a place of belonging was created by bringing several communities together — Kawaiahaʻo Seminary (1864), Mills Institute (1892), Okamura Boys Home (1898), the Korean Methodist Mission (1906) [dates indicate the founding of each school] to form Mid-Pacific Institute in 1908, then Epiphany Episcopal School (1937) in 2004. This is history.

Creating a place of belonging is school culture and identity. Every alumnus of Mid-Pacific since 1908 found not just a place of belonging but moreover a community of people to belong to, to be an active part of, to contribute to, to share beliefs and values with, and to be identified with.

And so this process of creating a place of belonging starts from the time each student steps onto the campus and continues in this 2024-2025 school year. For all employees, it was the opening convocation at Wailele Spring, the piko of our campus, where we haku a lei of kupukupu representing our continued growth and resilience as a community.

 

At the preschool and elementary, nurturing this important sense of belonging begins when students are greeted each morning by the staff and myself when we open car doors or when students walk onto campus. Every Monday morning we gather at the courtyard at 7:55 a.m. to chant our school oli, Welina Mānoa, and hear weekly announcements by 5th grade students. This past Tuesday, all 1380 students from preschool through high school and 150 faculty and staff gathered in community to attend the opening Convocation and the presentation of the newest preschool class of 3-year-olds, the Class of 2039, and the new Seniors, the Class of 2025.

 

Your child’s classroom setting and community of learners is a more intimate place of belonging and where understanding how to become members of a community and that they belong is practiced daily. These are part of the essential skills in the Learner Profile:

• I can work with others to build and strengthen our community.
• I show that I care for and respect the environment and community in which I live.
• I can make good choices by being aware of my own feelings; I can show empathy towards others.

Read your child’s classroom teacher’s blog on your myPueo page or on the Mid-Pacific website(some teachers have posted their blogs this week, and others will next week). Youʻll note how each teacher has been intentional about creating a place of belonging by helping students establish agreements or expectations as a classroom community, how students belong to the community and identify as a community.

One of the best examples of creating a place of belonging was the recent Hikina Pueo (in Hawaiian, a gathering of pueo at sunrise or the new day)! Families and their friends enjoyed an afternoon of friend-making, craft-making, play, and snacks, the best of these being the grade- level water balloon toss and shaved ice! (We have some very competitive parents :-) Our deepest appreciation to Nā ʻOhana Pueo parent organizers Jayme Sakai, Cheryll Aldridge, generous donations from the Toyama Family, and the many parent volunteers who prepared crafts, set up and cleaned up the event, and ran the snack areas. See this photo gallery courtesy of Holly Iwasaki.

 

Creating and sustaining a place of belonging is more than events. It is who we are and what we do as Mid-Pacific in the student-to-teacher, colleague-to-colleague, family-to-school relationships that engender our distinguished mission “to create a sense of community.” Words matter.

E Kūlia Kākou! Let’s strive and aspire together!

For our children,

Edna L. Hussey, Ed.D.
Principal