Questions
The ones we hear at open houses and in consultations, answered in full.
Tradewinds is a school for gifted and profoundly gifted children, kindergarten through fifth grade, who need more than traditional education can offer. We serve scholars who are intellectually curious, deeply motivated, and ready for challenges that match their abilities.
Yes. Tradewinds opened in August 2026 with kindergarten through fifth grade. We are now accepting applications for kindergarten through sixth grade, and we will keep adding a grade each year until the school runs kindergarten through eighth. A child who enrolls in any elementary grade can stay at Tradewinds through eighth grade.
In named subject blocks with specialist teachers, every day. Math Workshop runs each morning for the whole school in small groups set by level, with skills tracked and practised until they hold. Language Arts is its own block four days a week, where scholars are taught to write a sentence, a paragraph and an argument, and that writing is then used in humanities and science. Spelling, arithmetic fluency, handwriting and the habits of finishing and revising work are taught and assessed like everything else. The curriculum is a superset of the standard elementary and middle school curriculum, and reports say what a scholar can do against a standard.
Yes. Tradewinds scholars will apply to the most rigorous high schools in Honolulu, and the curriculum is designed with those admissions in mind. It is a superset of the standard elementary and middle school curriculum, so a scholar arrives with the foundations every high school expects, a record of work well beyond grade level, and the habit of being asked hard questions and answering them.
Gifted children need different work. Scholars here work at their developmental level rather than their age level, so a second grader doing fourth grade mathematics can sit beside a peer exploring geometry proofs. Eight scholars to a teacher makes that practical, and the day is built from whatever medium does each job best: paper for reading and first drafts, hands for building, a seminar table for arguing. Social-emotional support runs through every day, because being gifted brings its own difficulties.
A teacher assigns the work, and the work is pitched to what the child can actually do rather than to the grade on the door. In reading and mathematics that means a scholar can move as far and as fast as they are ready to, and it means a child can be years ahead in one subject and exactly where they are in another without anyone pretending otherwise. As our Head of School puts it: grade levels sometimes fall apart, so let’s just work with the child themselves.
Project-based learning is a teaching approach where scholars gain deep knowledge through active exploration of real-world challenges and questions. For gifted children, this provides a high ceiling: there’s no limit to how far they can take their learning. Instead of being constrained by grade-level expectations, they can dive deeply into complex topics, make connections across disciplines, and develop critical thinking skills that match their intellectual abilities. Projects give them the space to pursue their intense interests while building skills in research, collaboration, and creative problem-solving.
No. Tradewinds is designed for high-potential gifted children without serious complicating behavioral factors, and it is not a therapeutic or clinical twice-exceptional program. At the same time, we value inclusion and neurodiversity, and we know that giftedness often travels with perfectionism, mild anxiety, mild attention differences and other forms of neurodivergence. These traits are common in gifted populations, and our instruction, classroom structures and social-emotional approach are built with them in mind. Where a child has complicating factors, they need to be mild enough that they do not interfere with the flow, rhythm and intellectual intensity of the day.
Tuition for 2026–2027 is $36,000 per year. Tuition for 2027–2028 will be announced. Need-based financial aid is available; apply through School and Student Services using partner code 201329 for Tradewinds School.
Our campus is at 1041 10th Avenue in Kaimukī, Honolulu: a corner where children have gone to school since 1937. The site includes two buildings with nearly 7,000 square feet of space, providing room for both academic excellence and hands-on project-based learning.
Every applicant needs a current cognitive assessment before an admission decision. Families may submit the application before testing is complete. We accept the WISC-V, WPPSI-IV, or Stanford-Binet, administered in 2023 or later. A score of 130 or above generally indicates giftedness, and we review the full assessment profile, not only the overall iq score.
The core school day runs 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, Monday through Friday. Fridays are Holoholo Friday: field-based learning off campus, separate enrichment clusters, and guest teachers. Extended Education runs 3:00–4:30 PM, Monday through Thursday.
Extended Education is Tradewinds’ after-school specials program: small, specialist-led classes from 3:00–4:30 PM, Monday through Thursday, for students in grades 2–5. Enrolled Tradewinds families have priority enrollment, and remaining spots are open to families from outside the school.
Yes. Specials are woven into the core school day alongside academics. Our rotation brings working artists, craftspeople, athletes, naturalists, designers, and engineers into the school alongside classroom teachers. Areas include studio art and handwork, cooking, drama, movement, design, outdoor education, nature study, and PE. Some instructors also teach Extended Education in the afternoons.
Fall 2026 offers two semester-long programs for students in grades 2–5: Robotics (Mondays & Wednesdays) with Serena Legg, and Photography (Tuesdays & Thursdays) with Nicole Zimmerman. Each meets two afternoons a week, 3:00–4:30 PM.
Each Fall 2026 program is $1,000 for the semester (two afternoons a week, 3:00–4:30 PM).
No. Extended Education runs Monday through Thursday during the academic year only. Fridays are Holoholo Friday: a separate part of the core school week with field-based learning off campus, enrichment clusters, and guest teachers. Extended Education does not operate during winter, spring, or summer breaks.
Accepting applications for Fall 2027 (2027–2028). Visit the admissions page for the application process, tuition details, and timeline.
Tradewinds is legally operating for the 2026–2027 school year while completing the Hawai‘i Council of Private Schools licensing process. The City and County of Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting has approved the campus to operate as a school. Accreditation with the Hawai‘i Association of Independent Schools is a separate process for operating schools and will follow on its own timeline.
Our mascot is the mōlī, the Hawaiian name for the Laysan albatross. These remarkable seabirds embody the spirit we cultivate in our scholars. Mōlī are known for their incredible intelligence and problem-solving abilities, their lifelong commitment to learning and adaptation, and their ability to soar vast distances across the Pacific Ocean. Like the mōlī that rides the trade winds across thousands of miles of ocean, we want our scholars to harness their natural gifts and ride the currents of their curiosity to explore the world. The mōlī also represents resilience and deep connection to Hawai‘i’s natural environment: values that are central to our school’s mission.
A few short blocks on a school day, scheduled by the teacher, on a BunnyPad that does exactly one thing. Rather than asking you to take a number on faith, we publish where those blocks fall in the day and what fills them, so you see the whole day rather than one figure out of it. The BunnyPad goes home for homework and does the same one thing there.
Because in a typical classroom a gifted seven-year-old spends close to none of the day at the edge of what they can do. They finish early, they are right the first time, and they get years of practice at being right and almost none at feeling stuck. Rabbithole lets a teacher be at eight tables at once, handing each child something hard, pitched to their level rather than their age. In our founder’s words: “I think there’s still a ton of learning that is best done in the physical world, not on screens.”
No. In our founder’s words: “So eight kids in a room at a time, and basically teachers that are really able to know each child well enough to know exactly how far to nudge them to go a little bit deeper.” A teacher assigns the block, reads what came out of it, and changes the next day’s lesson because of it.
No. “ChatGPT’s job is to answer questions. The job is to have all the answers. And obviously that’s not what you want in a teacher.” Ours is built to withhold, to ask one question at a time, and to hand the thinking back.
One scholar wanted to write a fairy tale set during the Second World War and didn’t know enough about the war to set a scene. Her teacher dispatched a Rabbithole lesson on daily life in wartime, rationing and air raids and blackout curtains, and the story got written. That is the shape of it: the child brings the question, the teacher points the tutor at it, the child does the thinking.
No. Rabbithole is a tool, not a companion. It has no name, no face and no persona, it does not do emotional support or casual conversation, and if a scholar takes it there it stops and a teacher picks it up. The caption under the message box on every screen says so: “Rabbithole has no feelings. It won’t miss you and can’t be your friend.”
It stays ours: we built the software and we run it, so there is no vendor in the middle. Nothing about your child is sold or mined. There is no ad technology and no third-party analytics or tracking in the app. The providers that process the tutor’s conversations do so under terms that exclude training on our data.
It cannot browse the web with your child, image lookup is locked to strict safe search, and a filter sits between the model and the screen. If a scholar says something that worries us, a person is paged within the same exchange and the tutor stops teaching.
No gems, no streaks, no math Pokémon battles. No scores, no leaderboards, no notifications, nothing designed to pull your child back. There are unit badges a scholar can see their groupmates earned; that is the one place peers appear, and it ranks nobody.
It’s closer to the opposite. Most schools rent their technology from big companies whose business is engagement and data, and they get whatever those companies decide to ship. We wanted a school that owns its tools outright: built here, run by the people who teach with it the next morning, and answerable to nobody but our teachers and families. Rabbithole is designed to be completely open sourced. “We’re giving away the code for free. So this is not a business. This is a passion project and a gift.”
A bright child learns what is taught, quickly and well, and does fine in a strong regular classroom. A gifted child learns differently. They ask the question behind the question, make leaps nobody taught them, hold an interest for months, and are often out of step with their age in more than one direction at once. The difference matters because the regular classroom that suits the first child often leaves the second one bored, anxious or hiding what they can do. Our guide walks through the traits parents recognise.
Research consistently shows the opposite. Without appropriate challenge, gifted children are at risk for underachievement, anxiety, social isolation, and disengagement. “Being fine” in a standard classroom often means learning to hide what makes them different.
All children have strengths. Giftedness refers to a specific pattern of cognitive development that affects how a child processes information. Saying “all children are gifted” is well-intentioned but unhelpful for the ones who actually need different instruction, the same way saying “all children need glasses” doesn’t help the ones who can’t see the board.
Historically, access has been unequal, and that’s a legitimate problem the field continues to address. But the need for specialized instruction is real. A child whose mind works fundamentally differently deserves education designed for how they learn, regardless of family background. At Tradewinds, cognitive assessment identifies how a child thinks, not what their family earns.
Acceleration means matching instruction to readiness. A second-grader reading at a fifth-grade level isn’t being “pushed” by reading fifth-grade books: they’re being met where they are. The alternative, making them read second-grade material they mastered two years ago, is what actually causes harm.
Tracking sorts students into fixed lanes. Gifted education, done well, responds to a child’s developing strengths across domains. A student might be years ahead in math and on grade level in writing. The instruction should reflect that reality, not assign the child to a permanent tier.
There is some truth to this, and the history behind it cuts the other way. Many teaching methods now associated with gifted programs were originally designed for all students. John Dewey developed project-based learning for the universal child. Maria Montessori built her methods for underserved communities in Rome. Inquiry-based learning and flexible pacing were progressive ideas meant to transform all of education. Over time, these methods proved especially effective for high-ability learners and got cordoned off as “gifted enrichment.” These approaches work because they respect how children actually learn. We apply them with the depth and pacing that gifted learners need, but the underlying philosophy is about good education, not educational privilege.