Where Kids Love To Learn

ASSETS Schools is celebrating its 50th anniversary of success in teaching kids whom conventional schools could not

Wednesday - March 01, 2006
By Alice Keesing
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Salza signs a birthday card for a teacher as students
(from left) Melissa Phillips, Stephanie Dobbs and
Kylie Watanabe look on

And Salza knows only too well what the kids go through. He himself is dyslexic. He wasn’t diagnosed until after he’d graduated with a literary degree and after years of covering and hiding “something” that he thought made him “not quite up to snuff.”

As he will point out, failure in a factory-model classroom does not mean someone is dumb, nor does it mean they have to fail in real life -

unless, of course, the person is so disillusioned and damaged by the experience that they head down the wrong tracks.

At the low end of estimates, 10 percent of school students in this country have some sort of language-based learning disability. That translates to somewhere around 20,000 children facing these challenges in Hawaii, Salza says.

Ken Kwan knows that his son, Kurtis, could have been just another number without ASSETS. When Kurtis was in the third grade at Kamehameha Schools, his parents knew something wasn’t working. His grades were languishing as was his self-esteem. When extra tutoring didn’t help, Kamehameha worked with the Kwans to get Kurtis into ASSETS.

“Talk about going from one extreme to another,” Kwan says.

Lou Salza wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until after he
graduated from college

Now in the ninth grade, Kurtis earns A and B grades, comes home and gets into his homework, and he aspires to become an architect or engineer.

One more child into the water. It should be noted that Salza is quick to say that the problems don’t rest on the shoulders of Hawaii’s teachers. There is no lack of aloha in Hawaii’s schools, he says, but there is a problem with a system that caters to just one learning style. To that end, ASSETS has become a resource for teachers across the state who want to learn about educating students who learn differently.

Tucked between Honolulu Airport and Hickam Air Force Base, the school is made up of a bunch of portable classrooms - but it doesn’t look like a transient trailer park. Shady trees and a system of breezy walkways give the school the feeling of small village.

One of the first things you’ll notice when you visit ASSETS is the art and craft work. It’s everywhere. There are paintings and Roman clay tablets and an outrigger canoe and an old Western-style wagon - all of it from the hands of students who thrive on hands-on activities.

Step into a classroom, and you’ll spot an immediate difference from most schools: There is about one teacher for every eight students, a ratio that most public school teachers would just die for.(In the DOE, a general education teacher in the higher grades can expect to deal with up to 30 students.)

On the academic side, ASSETS uses a systematic reading program that gives dyslexic students the tools they need to learn. But the school also pays a lot of attention to the kids themselves, not just their academic progress. There is weekly one-on-one time with the teacher. And there are magic circles with the whole class to discuss and problem-solve anything from friendship issues to stranger safety.

And from the earliest grades, students get to chose electives that tap into their own skills and passions. The courses run the gamut from candle making to rocketry to cricket.

“It’s very serious play,” Salza says.

Just try to stop them from learning.

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