Punahou School

The Outdoor Education program at Punahou immerses students in experiences that fit within a mindful progression of K – 8 outdoor education experiences. These are designed to:

• Meet the changing needs of children and the world around them, integrate and enhance the School’s inquiry-based curriculum goals
• Immerse students in age-appropriate, memorable experiences that enhance a sense of place, both local and global
• Build a foundation of self-confidence, independence, awareness, exploration and inspiration by challenging the body and mind
• Connect them physically, mentally and spiritually to Hawaiian culture
• Enable them to form a meaningful relationship with the natural world

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Described by Stanford University’s Institute of Design as a “methodology for innovation,” Design Thinking is a framework for developing practical and creative resolutions. The process is built on five basic steps – empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. Students are taught to work through this process to create products or services that solve real-world problems.

The recently formed Design Thinking, Technology and Fabrication department at Punahou endeavors to fully integrate Design Thinking into the curriculum and across a multitude of disciplines at Punahou, making it a core component of the Punahou experience K – 12.

If success is more than GPAs, test scores and name brand colleges, what does it look like? At Punahou, cultivating social and emotional intelligence and ethical awareness is just as important as academic rigor for true college preparation. This is the kind of highly self-aware, intrinsically-motivated thinking that social and emotional learning is all about. Each student is nurtured toward wholeness of mind and spirit, emotion and logic, intellect and intuition.

A Punahou education develops values and character as much as it does intellectual or physical ability, preparing children for a lifetime of personal fulfillment, authenticity and purpose. While our students may be dramatically diverse in personality and interests, they embody the core values central to our institutional culture: empathy, collaboration, creativity, innovation, social responsibility, global awareness and moral leadership. The attentive cultivation of these values is what sets them apart in the world and what inspires Punahou graduates to a lifelong sense of personal and public purpose.