Column: Culture-based learning can be schools’ foundation

Last year’s devastating pandemic closing of our public schools shattered the concrete barriers between home and school, leaving teachers and families to scramble for ways to bridge the newly exposed gap.

That gap — the disconnect between home/family/life learning and the three rigid “Rs” of the brick-and-mortar classroom learning (reading, writing and ’rithmetic) — was a pre-pandemic existing condition that had long predisposed many learners, especially Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students, to failure by the modern standards of school achievement.

The Kahua Ko‘olau initiative in Oahu’s Windward District, which began in 2008 and concluded in 2020 when funding ran out, was designed to provide a comprehensive professional development experience in culture- and place-based education, with a course titled “Teaching With Aloha.” The program was driven by the urgent need to enhance the engagement and success of those left-behind learners.

Now, in COVID crisis time, when the arbitrary classroom walls have been forced to crumble, we, as committed public educators, are confronted with the critical importance of connecting to students and families in their real worlds.

More than ever we need to engage them in genuine learning experiences, grounded in culture and place, that support their growth and success in life in and beyond the classroom. In this work, which must go forward in new forms, we have much to learn from the Kahua Ko‘olau program just ended.

The goal of the Kahua program was to provide teachers with learning experiences that changed their minds and hearts, as well as to give them the tools to bring those changes to their classroom practice to the benefit of all their students. A survey of Kahua Ko’olau alumni of the past 12 years, just completed, documents the program’s success — and its long-term impact — in reaching those goals.

Four strategic themes emerged from teachers’ responses to questions about the impact of their Kahua experience on their current practice.

These themes harmoniously align with the components of Na Hopena A‘o (HA) — belonging, responsibility, excellence, total well-being and Hawaii — in expressing a new appreciation for and commitment to these fundamental culture-based education strategy sets:

>> Authentic cultural learning experiences for a strengthened sense of Hawaii and aloha.

>> Dynamic interpersonal learning for a strengthened sense of belonging and total well-being.

>> Place-based and community-connected learning for a strengthened sense of responsibility and Hawaii.

>> Authentic collaborative learning for a strengthened sense of excellence and responsibility.

Understanding this program’s success, when it is aligned with the work being done by our Department of Education’s Office of Hawaiian Education in infusing the HA principles into common practice, can illuminate the collective pathway forward.

That pathway must lead us to effective, culturally-responsive and place-based teaching practices as the foundation — ka hua — of public education in Hawaii so that all our diverse learners can grow and flourish in a healthy future.