Mahalo to Highlands Intermediate School Vice Principal Sara Yoshimura who invited me on Monday to visit and capture the recently revitalized COLTS Aloha Wall with its brand new letters and wonderful and inspiring post it messages written by the Highlands Intermediate students.
Highlands Intermediate SEL Counselor Mrs. Waynette Shirafuji spearheaded the revitalization project along with a hard working revitalization team of Mr. Nakagawa and Learning Center students, and Peacemakers Club students. The COLTS Aloha Wall was inspired by the Pearl City Shopping Center’s Messages of Life Healing W.A.L.L. – With Aloha, Love Lives forever (Stuck on Aloha)
Waynette Shirafuji, SEL Counselor, Highlands Intermediate School
“Miss Yoshimura brought it to our campus before the pandemic in October 2019. She had students write messages of inspiration and then she cut out all of these letters to spell COLTS and had one of the classes piece it together. Since then, over time it faded. So, my Peacemakers Club, who were spending time designing bathroom restrooms and painting and stuff, they decided, you know what, let’s revive the wall because it was faded and you couldn’t even read some of the messages. So, we sent it out to all the classes and told them to write their messages and that we’re going to revive the wall. I made little kits and we put three inch squares of different colors and put them in a bag and dropped them off in the teachers’ boxes. We made an announcement to go ahead and write your messages of inspiration for your classmates to see. They wrote their messages, and we started piecing it together. We took the old ones off, little by little, one letter at a time, and we just finished it a couple weeks ago. So now it’s here for next year’s students and hopefully it will inspire them, gives them Hope, and shows them Aloha.
We would like to thank you and Stuck on Aloha for the initial inspiration, also Ms. Yoshimura, Mr. Nakagawa’s class who helped us put up the wall, and my Peacemakers Club. We hope that the wall will serve as inspiration for those who walk by. Hopefully it will ripple out into the community.”
The COLTS Aloha Wall is a heartfelt expression of inspiration for Hope, Compassion, Courage, and Caring for one another that the Highlands Intermediate School students are extending to all through the spirit of Love and Aloha.
