The March 2012 issue arrived in the mail during the week of March 19, 2012.
Here is an online version: March 2012 Currents
- - - + - - -
- - - + - - -
The September 2011 issue of Currents arrived in the mail the week of September 26.
Please click here if you would like to view online (file is large, please allow time for downloading.): Currents September 2011
- - - + - - -
The May 2011 issue of Currents was mailed to Punahou families in late May 2011.
You may also view it here: May 2011 Currents
To view previous issues, click on the category "Currents" in the upper right corner.
- - - + - - -
The March 2011 issue of Currents was mailed to Punahou families the week of March 14, 2011.
You may also view it here: March 2011 Currents
To view previous issues, click on the category "Currents" in the upper right corner.
- - - + - - -
- - - + - - -
The September issue was mailed to Punahou families during the week of September 20, 2010.
The issue is also available here in full color! (large file, please allow time for downloading)
- - - + - - -
A special Summer issue of Currents was mailed to all families and received around July 24 to 26, 2010.
For your convenience, you may also click this link to view (in color!):
- - - + - - -
The May 2010 issue of Currents should have arrived around May 21, 2010.
For your convenience, here is a link to an online version:
- - - + - - -
The March issue arrived in mailboxes the week of March 15. To view or print the issue in full color, please go to this link:: March 2010 Currents
If you would like to opt-out of the mailing of Currents and receive it electronically via email, please go to: Currents Opt-out mailing
- - - + - - -
The November issue arrived in mailboxes the week of Nov. 30. To view or print the issue in full color, please open the attachment: November 2009 Currents
- - - + - - -
October 2009 Issue
- - - + - - -
Taken from: Currents (vol. 11, issue 1, September 2005)
The Luke Center for Public Service has provided a list of ways in which the Punahou community plans to support those devastated by the hurricane. To receive further updates, please join the "Levee of Love" group on ePunahou.
Friday, October 21, 3:00 - 8:00 p.m.: Levee of Love Festival
The money collected at this event will go to the American Red Cross.
- Concert featuring student performers, time TBD. To perform or volunteer, contact: Marisa Wriston, Devin Lee, Kevin Service, or Sarah Hodges (Class of '07).
- Collection of backpacks and school supplies to send to children. (Information about backpacks can be found at www.dosomething.org.) Donations should be brought to the Levee of Love Festival.Contact: Luke Center or Luana Yee (1st grade teacher).
Ongoing until October 21: Letters and Cards
- Students are invited to write to Hurricane victims. Letters will go in backpacks or in envelopes to send to children. Students may stop by Luke Center any time to make a card. Contact: Luke Center.
October 31: Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF
- Halloween collections will be broadened to include the additional focus of hurricane relief this year. Anyone can trick-or-treat and collect funds. Contact: Cathryn Lau (Junior School Faculty).
Date To Be Decided
- Faculty-Student Basketball Game. To play or help (with tickets, halftime free throw contest, concessions, etc.), Contact: Pauline Kunichika, Dana Herada (Class of '07) or Greg Puppione (Academy Faculty).
- - - + - - -
Taken from: Currents (vol. 11, issue 1, September 2005)
Does your daughter have a prom dress that probably won't be worn again? Would you like to help make someone's prom special? How about recycling that dress? Become part of a community-wide project and help an important community agency --The Domestic Violence Clearinghouse and Legal Hotline (DVCLH).
The Domestic Violence Clearinghouse and Legal Hotline is sponsoring the project Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Prom dresses donated by high school girls will be collected and sold at a pre-prom season sale in February. The community is invited to come and shop for a good cause.
The Domestic Violence Clearinghouse and Legal Hotline offers support and services to hundreds of woman and girls in Hawaii who suffer from abuse. The DVCLH provides education, telephone information, and referral and assistance to victims by helping them navigate their way to safety as well as by supporting them on their way through the legal system, including going to court.
On our campus, the dress drop-off site is the Luke Center for Public Service during the week of November 14 - 18, 2005. Please go through your closets and join us in our participation in this community project. If you have questions, contact Eileen McCool (K - 6 Counselor) at 945–1327, or email her at emccool@punahou.edu.
- - - + - - -
Taken from: Currents (vol. 11, issue 1, September 2005)
By Laurel Bowers Husain, Punahou School Director of Communications
Punahou continues to improve its security policies and procedures to protect students during their day at school. We are pleased to advise parents of two recent technical enhancements that specifically address our ability to communicate with regard to any emergency.
- An on-campus broadcast system which will facilitate campus coordination and communication in response to an emergency.
- An Internet-based communication tool, Connect-ED, which will enable us to individually communicate with parents about emergency situations or important school events. It will allow us to send personalized telephone and/or email messages, essentially reaching all our families within minutes.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we are all at a heightened level of awareness concerning various types of emergencies which may affect our community. In assessing Punahou's procedures, it has been clear that our ability to contact families and notify them of a wide variety of important events is a critical component of our Emergency Plan.
Connect-ED, this new notification system, can routinely reach families through a call or voice message to all home phones. In an emergency situation, it will be programmed to simultaneously dial up to six phone numbers (home, work, and cell phone for two parents) per student and deliver important announcements.
Our goal will be to test this notification system by delivering messages of interest to parents. To make this important communication tool effective, accurate phone numbers are critical. Routine testing will help to ensure numbers are up-to-date. We will notify families of planned tests so that you can become accustomed to this useful communication tool.
The safety of our Punahou community is a high priority for the school's administration, faculty, and physical plant staff. We are pleased to have these communication tools in place to assist us, whether we are coordinating a response to an infrastructure problem or to a natural disaster.
For information on this system: Connect-ED serves K - 12 schools throughout the United States. Learn more at www.notification.com.
- - - + - - -
Taken from: Currents (vol. 11, issue 1, September 2005)
This summer, two Junior School teachers attended the Michael Gurian Institute for a workshop entitled "Boys and Girls Learn Differently!" with fifty other teachers from around the nation and abroad. For four days, they focused on studies of the brain as it relates to teaching and learning. Returning to campus, they summarized these pointers to share with colleagues. We thought parents might be interested, too!
From teachers Mark Eliashof (6th grade) and Max Nu’uhiwa (3rd grade):
The following list of facts about the human brain comes from what Mike Gurian calls "nature-based theory" about learning. According to Gurian, we need to pay attention to the biology of brain development and acknowledge human nature when setting up a learning environment.
- A typical toast and cereal breakfast, loaded with carbs, can make a child’s brain groggy and make it difficult to focus. A higher protein, lower carb diet promotes learning.
- When a student is under stress, the level of cortisol, a stress hormone, increases in the brain. Cortisol interferes with learning. For example, if children fight with their parents before school, causing stress, cortisol may interfere with that student’s learning at school. How do girls typically deal with this stress? Being more verbal, girls tend to use their words by talking with friends. How about boys? They typically need physical activity to reduce cortisol levels.
- During middle school years, when boys are lower in the social pecking order, stress hormones go up and learning goes down. As teachers and parents, we need to identify such children to help them reduce their stress levels and improve their learning.
- Is too much TV bad? According to research, for every hour of TV a child between the ages of 1 and 3 watches daily, the risk of an attention disorder by age 7 increases 10%. This is not because of the content, but because of the unrealistically fast pace of the visual images on TV which may alter brain development.
- During elementary school, boys are more interested in objects and things, girls in people and relationships. Boys tend to build high towers and then knock them down, girls build low and expansive. What about their stories? For boys, they involve excitement and action, with little concern for victims. For girls, they involve human dynamics and concern for victims.
- The average attention span of a person under the best conditions is seven minutes! Attention is regulated by the hippocampus of the brain, which acts like an executive secretary, sorting and filing information.
- The hippocampus gets overwhelmed easily, so there is the need to focus/break/focus/break, so the hippocampus can rejuvenate.
- To help children pay attention to the things we want them to learn, we need to provide their brains with “brain breaks.” These can be short activities, providing novelty, that allow the brain to shift gears and refocus on learning when the break is over.
- - - + - - -
Taken from: Currents (vol. 11, issue 1, September 2005)
Last March, Kelly Aldinger '06 and her parents began a year-long series of articles in Currents about their experiences and perspectives as Kelly works her way through the college search process. In this issue, Kelly, who is now preparing to make her choices about where to apply, and her mother, Charlie, who is also getting ready for something -- letting her child go -- muse on the meaning of senior year.
By Kelly Aldinger '06:
Today I had a chat with a good friend who told me she was angry that her parents told her she could do whatever she wanted to do in life. She was finally looking at colleges and realizing just how tough they were to get into. To be honest, I was at a loss for words: as much as I love her, what she said was a true statement, for everyone.
We all figure we can get in anywhere (we're Punahou kids!) and discovering we can't is a scary fact. The only piece of advice I could give her was to not let it get you down. No, we can't all get into School X, but there are 3,641 colleges out there, and chances are, one of those will make you a very happy person. Finding it just takes a bit of work.
This summer, I definitely put in time searching college reviews and websites. I'm glad I did because I'm two days into senior year and feeling pretty overwhelmed. My classes expect more out of me, as do my friends and family. Getting a good grasp on where I want to apply has at least given me a solid foundation as I enter the year; it definitely takes off some of the pressure. I also filled out the informational aspect of the common application: my birthday, social security number, sports played, etc. This was another simple way to slowly ease into the whole process. It helped me regain a little control in my life and now, as deadlines approach, I'm glad I don't have to start from scratch. Getting excited and familiarized with the amazing options available for next year has really kept me from being swallowed by the vastness of the unknown 'world of colleges.'
What I couldn't prepare for was the fact that I'm a senior. As school begins, I'm starting to deal with the impact of that statement. Nine months from now, I will not be a Punahou student: an identity I've had for 11 years. It's frightening. It's exhilarating. It's emotional! I've found that my friends and I are reminiscing more and more about the Winne Years and the good ol' days, primarily because I think looking back seems easier than looking forward. I've welled up in tears at the beach because, as a senior, every surf session and every moment with friends all mean that much more. I didn't realize how incredibly different it would feel.
As Forrest Gump's "mama" used to tell him, "Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know just what you're going to get." And this is pretty much how I feel about college and senior year. The only thing keeping me sane is that I've found you can pick which box you choose from: get a truffle assortment if you like truffles! Get a box of dark chocolates if you prefer them. Research the nutritional content if you're worried about your figure! Maybe you can't have exactly what you want, but in the end: is eating chocolate ever bad?
By Charlie Aldinger:
Summer always seems foreshortened by the echo of school bells ringing across the country. There were many reminders that this year will be a momentous one: A new school ring on my daughter's finger. Senior pictures. The new dress code. And plenty of college applications filling the mailbox. I feel as if I am preparing myself for the long goodbye...the last Book Day....the last Carnival and Variety Show
finale...those April pronouncements of acceptances and rejections when the reality of it all smacks you upside the head...and finally...the pomp and circumstance of graduation. I expect a push-me-pull-you relationship with my youngest, who is now more a young woman than my baby child, perched on the brink of a new age of independence. I struggle with knowing how much to let go, how much to trust, how much to risk, and when to hold on. I pray daily that her maturity catches up with her desire for self-direction. I see more signs that it has and fewer signs that it has a long way to go. I take it to heart. But cautious optimism is tempered by the reality that a mother friend of mine lost her precious senior because of one single moment of bad judgment -- he chose to drink and drive.
Have we done it well enough? Have we raised decent human beings? What did we forget and what must we focus on right now because our time is running out? Our parenting goals this year are all about accountability and geared toward increasing self-directed, independent behavior. Independence and accountability are inseparable. You make the choice, you pay the price. We opened a new checking account in her name. We'll apply for a student credit card when she's 18. The curfew has been extended. New freedoms and new responsibilities are the order of the day. And with every minor setback, we echo our own parents' lament, "We'll start treating you like an adult just as soon as you start acting like one."
Summer provided lots of time for cyber-searching through college campuses on the Internet. A few more possibilities emerged, while others were left in a wake of disinterest. She doesn't like me looking over her shoulder while she writes her essays. Finding a college is her job, not mine. I try to give her lots of space, but I can't help but be curious. She thinks I want her to go to a big name school. I really want her to know I'll be proud to wear whatever name is on the T-shirt. Really proud. Regardless.
Yes...those hallowed hallways of learning are beckoning one last time...the bells are ringing....Seniors rule! But I can't help wondering, "Where did all those summers go?"
- - - + - - -
2004-2005 School Year
2005-2006 School Year
- - - + - - -