Kelli Furushima remembers the culture shock she experienced after she left Kapalama Elementary School and entered the same class at Punahou School that happened to include the future president of the United States.

The change from public school to what some consider to be Hawai'i's most elite private school changed Furushima's view of the world and of herself.

"Typical local style is that you sit there and you don't say anything," Furushima said. "The people who spoke up were not looked kindly upon in the public school system."

She had always been a good student who obeyed the rules and got good grades. But the expectations at Punahou went far deeper than mere academic performance.

"I was surprised at how much everyone was encouraged to participate and share their ideas," Furushima said. "It was an environment where you listened to other people's ideas, you respected their points of view and learned from it. You don't just sit there and listen to everything being spoon-fed to you."

It may be impossible to separate the major factors in Barack Obama's life that shaped him into the man who will become America's 44th president after his inauguration on Tuesday.

There was the no-nonsense, Kansas influence of the maternal grandmother who raised him, the personal turmoil he felt being African American that he has written and spoken about and the over-arching effect of growing up in an island state that has no majority ethnic group.

"Not only is it the influence of Punahou, but more so the influence of Hawai'i in general," said Eric J. Kusunoki, who was Obama's homeroom teacher throughout his high school years. "Here in Hawai'i we're all minorities. We all have to learn to get along to get things done and we all have to get along to survive. It fosters cooperation and it fosters understanding and it fosters people learning about other cultures."

While Obama's teachers and fellow students from the class of 1979 stake no special claim to Obama's success, they can see shadows of his years at Punahou in his speeches, through his selection of Cabinet members and — perhaps — future White House policy.

Like Furushima, Obama started out in Hawai'i's public school system and initially entered Noelani Elementary School, near the University of Hawai'i.

But in 1967 his mother, Ann Dunham and her new, second husband, Lolo Soetoro, took 6-year-old Barack to Jakarta, Indonesia, until age 10 — when he returned to Honolulu to live with his grandparents in their two-bedroom apartment on Beretania Street. Madelyn and Stanley Dunham enrolled their grandson in the fifth grade at nearby Punahou on a partial scholarship, where he impressed his teachers.

"You look at the pictures and he always seems to be deep in thought," Kusunoki said. "And he was always a very good listener. He would look you in the eye and listen to what you had to say."

As an eighth-grader, Obama played intermediate football and sang in the boys' chorus and concert choir in the ninth and 10th grades, respectively.

He moved up from the junior varsity basketball team as a sophomore to the varsity the next year and was the only left-hander on the team that won the state championship in Obama's senior year.

Furushima still has the Punahou catalog sent to her home before her and Obama's senior year. It includes this passage:

"Punahou's hope is to promote understanding of the historical and cultural heritage of mankind so that students are better able to interpret the problems and challenges of the age in which they live; to stimulate meaningful participation in the shared life of the local environment; to encourage students to be aware of the dignity of other human beings; to demonstrate respect for themselves and their goals, in the hope that through sensitivity, concern and commitment the spirit will grow."

In an e-mail in which she included excerpts from the catalog, Furushima wrote, "Wow, does that invoke the Barry of today or what?"

Obama wrote an essay about community service for the Punahou bulletin in 1999 after his election to the Illinois senate. He returned in 2004 to address students and faculty directly about community service.

"There was something about this place and this school that embraced me, gave me support, gave me encouragement and allowed me to grow and to prosper," Obama told the students in his 2004 speech. "I'm extraordinarily grateful to this school for the wonderful education that ... it gave me."

Furushima also saw influences from their shared Punahou experience in a 2008 speech that Obama gave in Philadelphia, in which he said, "I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together — unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction — towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren."

Kusunoki believes some of Obama's Punahou and Hawai'i experiences are also reflected in Obama's Cabinet selections, which have included his Democratic presidential rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Sen. Clayton Hee, D-23rd, (Kane'ohe, Kahuku) — a Kamehameha Schools grad — is glad he sent his son, Ka'ohu Berg-Hee, to Punahou. Berg-Hee graduated in 2005, but only after volunteering at the Lanakila Senior Citizen Center through Punahou.

"That was part of his education," Hee said. "The greatest thing about Punahou, in my opinion, has to do with the public service requirement to graduate or be on the honor roll. ... Can you imagine the values that are instilled in the youngsters in having to provide a service commitment to the broader community to people who are without?"

Kusunoki and others say they can see a direct line between the young man they knew and the future president he has become.

"When we listen to him talk and see how he's affected so many people," Kusunoki said, "we feel that perhaps he is an example of what we've been trying to achieve here at Punahou School."