Impact Stories - Le Jardin Academy Private School in Hawaii

Academic Excellence Fund
The Academic Excellence Fund is an endowment established with an initial gift by a current LJA family in 2019. The fund was created for the purpose of providing recognition and monetary awards each year to LJA employees selected as exemplary in four categories. Since its inception, LJA has celebrated a total of 13 awardees in the categories of Excellence in Primary Years Education, Excellence in Middle Years Education, Excellence in High School Education, and Excellence in Supporting Teaching & Learning (staff). This celebration of excellence inspires nominations annually by faculty, staff, students, and parents. Other donors may make a gift to this fund.

Madame Akina Scholarship
Three generations of the Jackson ‘Ohana showed their family’s gratitude and respect for LJA’s Junior School program by creating the Madame Akina Scholarship in honor of Madame Francoise Akina upon her retirement in 2020. A full two-year scholarship for one PK/JK student of Native Hawaiian descent, this award affords its awardee full access to the resources of Le Jardin Academy and the Primary Years Program (PYP). We are loving watching our inaugural Mme Akina Scholar thrive as she dances through her JK year!

Flight STEM
Ramsay Barnes, LJA’s dynamic Middle School Design Teacher, is a man on a mission! He has just championed a brand-new Unit of Inquiry incorporating FT STEM into the IB Design & Science curriculum as an Interdisciplinary Unit. The program combines physics, mathematics and design through the science of aviation. Students will build and fly their own model plane from scratch, making use of the nearby Kawainui Model Airplane Field, an RC park just down Kapaa Quarry Road!

Spheros Get Rolling!
LJA Lower School Students love to get hands-on with spheros--remarkably cool programmable robot and STEAM-based educational tools that enable them to learn, create, and invent through coding, science, music and art. Spheros are so cool our program was funded by and featured at the 2021 AFCEA Hawaii STEM Conference!