Ka Malu o Kaimana Hila

Under the Protection of Diamond Head

Waikīkī School Parent Bulletin - January 11, 2022

January Habit of the Month - Taking Responsible Risks

Waikīkī School begins 2022 by focusing on "Taking Responsible Risks."

What this Habit of Mind looks like: People volunteering, trying a new approach, and learning something new.
What this Habit of Mind sounds like: People saying “I’ll try,” “I can do this because…,” or “What can I learn by challenging myself?”
What this Habit of Mind feels like: It is rewarding. It can also be both exciting and scary.

Sometimes we are afraid to ask questions or to try something new because we are worried about making a mistake or getting something wrong. But Habits of Mind founder Dr. Art Costa explains that a key trait of successful people is that they are not stopped by this fear of failing or of making mistakes. They are willing to venture forth and take responsible risks. "Responsible" risks are not foolish or impulsive ones. Rather, they are adventures that are informed by research, past knowledge, and a careful weighing of potential consequences.

When we reframe our "mistakes" and choose to see them not as "failures" but instead as experiences that provide us with rich opportunities for learning, we facilitate growth. We exercise our wonderment and curiosity, prepare ourselves to become thoughtful decision-makers, and strive to better our world. As Waikīkī School Principal Bonnie Tabor so often told us, Taking Responsible Risks is at the core of our school's mindful culture and our mission to empower students to craft lives that are truly extraordinary.

All practice is shaped through the lens of our mindful culture. We do not tell students to just memorize for the test or teachers to simply follow the script. Rather, we provide both students and teachers with time and encouragement, which allow them to think flexibly, take responsible risks, create, imagine, and innovate... Confident that our students and teachers know who we are, we trust them to lead the way. Proceeding from their individual passions and needs, we empower each person to create and recreate, to invent and reinvent, to do and persistently redo, and to continue to ingeniously author the life-long process of actualizing his or her potential as a mindful human being.

Bonnie Tabor, in Nurturing Habits of Mind in Early Childhood: Success Stories from Classrooms Around the World, (2017)

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Fifth Grade teacher Matt Lawrence encouraged responsible risk-taking when he challenged his students to create solar powered ecosystem models that represented the flow of energy through a food chain (December 2021/January 2022).

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Updated Health and Safety Wellness Check and Return to School/Work Guidance

Our Health and Safety Wellness Check and Return to School/Work Guidelines have been updated and is in effect as of 1/11/22. They can be viewed here.

The formatting for the Return to School/Work Criteria (page 2) has been changed slightly to improve user-friendliness and a section to address participation in high-risk activities (e.g., athletics and choir) has been added.

Please continue to complete a daily wellness before coming to school or work. Mahalo for all that you do to help keep our schools and communities safe! Your diligence makes a difference in our collective fight against COVID.