Lahaina students find resilience in temporary classrooms after wildfire

Lahaina students find anticipation

Maui students instrumentality to people aft Lahaina fires 03:29

Two years aft 1 of the worst wildfires successful American past devastated the city of Lahaina, teachers astatine King Kamehameha III Elementary School are moving to supply stableness for their youngest students who mislaid their historical schoolhouse successful the disaster.

The August 2023 wildfire that swept crossed the aged whaling metropolis killed much than 100 radical and destroyed countless homes. Among the losses was the century-old King Kamehameha III Elementary School, leaving hundreds of children without their acquainted learning environment.

Now operating from a impermanent field connected the doorstep of the Maui Nature Reserve, the schoolhouse represents the 4th antithetic determination students person called location since the fires. FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers constructed the impermanent installation successful little than 90 days.

For educators similar Janeen Tempo, who has taught astatine the schoolhouse for much than a decade, and acquisition adjunct Darice Garcia, some Maui natives, helping students process trauma became arsenic important arsenic accepted lessons.

"In the aboriginal days, I would perceive the kids marque comments. 'Oh, my location is gone oregon my relative died,'" Garcia said.

The shared experience of loss created unexpected bonds betwixt teachers and students. Tempo recovered herself relating to children who had mislaid their homes.

"I person had students, oh, you know, my location burned down. I go, I'm sorry. Mine too," Tempo said. "And conscionable I deliberation for them, knowing that somebody's successful the aforesaid concern conscionable benignant of alleviates immoderate of their fear."

Despite the trauma they faced, educators said they were struck by their students' resilience.

"There are times wherever the kids really helped maine retired much than  I helped them out," Tempo said. "I felt similar they were much resilient than I was sometimes due to the fact that they would travel to schoolhouse and they'd beryllium anxious to learn. And I sometimes beryllium going, ohio my gosh, but they're each happy. So I gotta enactment connected that bully look and I person to beryllium brave besides with them."

The impermanent schoolhouse features outdoor learning spaces wherever kindergarteners thin gardens and prime cherry tomatoes, creating caller routines amid the disruption.

Garcia emphasized the value of providing accordant attraction for children whose lives were upended.

"Just being here, you know, being that unfastened arms for them, that love, the compassion," Garcia said. "There's conscionable there's been truthful overmuch of their regular breached up, you know. So to cognize that they tin travel to a spot that there's radical who attraction astir them and that we truly, genuinely care."

• Maui
• Wildfire