Click on the name to learn more about our Health & Wellness Academy
teachers.
- Gaynell Fuchs: Health Occupations
- Connie Leyendecker: English Language Arts
- Dane Nelson: Mathematics
- Hanakahi Perreira: Team Leader / Hawaiian Language
- Lisa Soares: Health
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Academic Endorsement Plan for Health & Wellness ( pdf )
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Bottom row: Dane Nelson, Connie Leyendecker
Top row: Hanakahi Perreira, Gaynell Fuchs, Lisa Soares
Aloha mai kakou!
The Health and Wellness team enters this school year healthy and well,
and hopes for the same for all reading this. Our members have Bachelors
degrees in health, P.E., mathematics, computer science, speech communication,
theatre arts, English, history, and Hawaiian studies, and Masters degrees
in educational leadership, English, and curriculum and instruction, and
we have a total of 94 years of teaching experience. Another reason we can
relate to our students is because we have seven children, and seven grandchildren.
One member of the team has such dedication to education that all of his
work experience has been in this field, while others have had jobs as tobacco
farm worker, popcorn maker, greeter at the visitor information book at the
Hilo airport, and girl singer with several bands. Likewise, our hobbies
range from gardening to sewing to traveling to computer gaming to hula.
Many of us spent some of the summer reading Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows, while others perused deeper material, such as Covey’s Seven
Healthy Habits of Teens, and local author Lois Ann Yamanaka’s Behold
the Many.
As we reflected on highlights of the last year at KS, we warmly recall the
Academic Decathlon team winning states, and the beautiful singing and dancing
at Ho`ike, though our expertise varies from simply “not being scared”
to dance at Ho`ike to having danced for over 25 years!
Together we have six pets and spouses (though these latter have not all
been simultaneous), twelve swimsuits, and eight siblings. For junk food
we like popcorn, ice cream, and arare and ice cream together. Though there
really isn’t much time for television, we do enjoy Damages, Rescue
Me, and Ugly Betty.
We’re looking forward to learning about your children, too, as well
as teaching them their academics. Please keep in touch with us throughout
the year as we all work to keep the students of Kamehameha Schools Hawai`i
healthy and well.
Na makou no me ka `oia`io.
