Kahaluu Elementary was my first school mural. My wife and I lived in Kahaluu at the time and I was in tune with the children's love of their community.

The children's response to my question about what is special about the location of your school yielded the obvious answer; the mountains!!! At Kahaluu Elementary, you feel like you are next to a wall. A beautiful green, growing wall of life that reaches up to the heavens and holds the clouds up to the sky.

Then there are the valleys; this mountain wall we know as the Koolaus, or the Koolau Mountain Range, divides the island of Oahu into the Windward side and the Leeward side and has valleys so deep they disappear. The Koolaus were definitely the main attraction of the mural.

Mrs. Jean Tsuda, the principal at the time, wanted to focus on the importance of reading. Since the wall the mural is to be mounted on is 55 ft. long and a main thoroughfare facing the office building and cafeteria, we decided to tell a story with this wall. The goal was to create a tile mural that illustrates the children's ideas into a concept that shows the growth and development of their literacy and environment at Kahaluu Elementary.

The whole school of approximately 300 children painted the 2 ft. x 47 ft. tile mural in 10 days and cost $6,000. The kindergarten children painted the first 6 ft., the 1st graders painted the next 6 ft. section, the 2nd graders painted the next 6 ft. section and so forth. The backdrop of the Koolau Mountains set the stage for this story of reading, learning, and growing in Kahaluu.

The book opened in the foreground has pages blowing in the wind and illustrates the kinds of books the children of that grade level are reading. They voted on which titles to use and painted the titles on the pages. Other interesting feedback from the students was in relation to "clothes and socks getting smaller" and birthdays being a symbol of the passage of time.

It was here at Kahaluu Elementary that I started my involvement with teaching and feeling the intrinsic reward of doing something better than creating; teaching enthusiastic hearts how they could express their ideas visually.