Building Community

I hope you all have had a wonderful week. While my body was tired from last week’s amazing experience with the Class of 2026 at Nu’alolo Kai and the mālama ʻāina opportunity that we had together and then going straight into the fabulous evening for Island Schoolʻs Carnival, my week was buoyed by all the wonderful feelings generated by those two distinct experiences. Iʻm so grateful to be a part of a school that believes so wholeheartedly in the importance of community. We know we need to tend to it, take steps to nurture it, and also let our community grow and take its own shape.

To that end, our faculty and staff have been doing important work regarding how we support our students to engage with each other in ways that build up our community as well as articulating clearly in these opening weeks of school what behaviors are out of bounds.

We began this year by reflecting with all of our students from PK all the way to 12th Grade on the kind of community we want to sustain and that best supports student personal and academic growth. This meant we opened the year with clear intentions regarding being a  mobile phone and “smart device” free campus, formalizing our anti-bullying training for our faculty and staff so they can better intervene when there is problematic power dynamics between students, and asking our students and families to confirm they have read and reviewed the Student and ʻOhana Handbook. We have to all agree on basic community expectations to be one crew together here at Island School that supports the growth of each of our students. 

We know that students have greater success, emerge as more confident and resilient, and readily have strategies to be problem solvers when they know they have a meaningful place in a community. This does not mean everything is perfect. It means community members know we will be held accountable for expectations, we can self-advocate when we want or need to approach change or challenge, we know that we are valued for who we are, and we have the confidence to value others for who they are, even when we are different from one another.

My parents were often preparing me for a world they did not know themselves, for communities they only imagined. They wanted me to have experiences, like college, graduate school, world travel, leading organizations, that they didn't have access to. So instead of trying to take care of things for me, they launched me out, over and over again, into deeper and deeper water, on my own. From the beginning, they instilled in me skills that they knew would serve me in whatever community I found myself in - work hard, be prepared, engage and learn with and from others. I share this because I believe in this kind of nurturing…the steadfast belief in a child to make their way through challenge, conflict even, not because we know it will be easy, but because they know they have our unconditional love and our belief in their skills to make their way forward. They trust we'll be there as guides or advisors when needed, and we know they will grow from the challenge, the discomfort, the dissonance, because that is how all learning happens.

Building community and maintaining one is not easy. You will continue to hear about our work regarding self-advocacy, resilience in the face of uncertainty, and using social power to build up others vs. bring them down. We look forward to all this year holds in our partnership with your family as our students take on all that lies ahead.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful weekend. And as always, mahalo for the opportunity to walk with you through these important years.

Together,

Nancy Nagramada P’29

Head of School

n.nagramada@ischool.org