Students lead the charge at King Kaumuali‘i Elementary School

There was a time when a soldier was honorable and GI Joe the favorite toy for boys everywhere. Lost wars, debatable politics and an internal cultural war have rocked this virtuous picture of the American soldier, but some students at King Kaumuali‘i Elementary School are leading the charge to once again give honor to the soldiers who remain in essence the example of service, sacrifice and civic virtue.

On Nov. 11, as the nation pauses to remember the price of peace and the cost of freedom, the students and faculty at King Kaumuali‘i Elementary School will take a moment to “Salute a Veteran” at their school.

Several members of the student council armed with a power point and DVD presentation took a moment at a faculty meeting to enlist teachers’ help to carry out their Veterans Day Project.

This may be the first case on record of students at King Kaumuali‘i motivating teachers to carry out their “assignments” in a schoolwide project. Teachers are a dedicated lot but are generally laden with lessons, units, assessments, benchmarks, AYP and pupils who are not meeting proficiency. Adding more to their busy schedules is a tricky endeavor. But this is exactly what the students did in leading the charge to revive a lesson in civic virtue.

The council members, with the help of their teacher advisor appealed to the Department of Education’s mission statement to sanction the event. Teaching students “civic responsibility” is listed as one of the three priorities for the department.

For some veterans, the sacrifice was too uncomfortable to talk about and they declined the invitation to the classrooms. For those veterans who did accept, King Kaumuali‘i Elementary School is proud to have them on campus.