Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 17, Number 7, 1 July 2000 — A bright future for Hawaiʻiʻs immersion program [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A bright future for Hawaiʻiʻs immersion program

By Caitriona Kearns ĪHE CHILDREN and teachers who have supported statewide Hawaiianlanguage education, owe their success to a shared commitment to the Hawaiian language. Today 1 ,800 students in immersion schools speak Hawaiian fluently. The immersion school program started with two schools in 1987. Puanani Wilhelm, educational specialist for Hawaiian language immersion in the DOE, was the first teacher in Hilo. She remembers when the idea of Hawaiian-language immersion was first proposed to her. "I was living in Portland when I got asked to eome back and teach in an immersion school, and I didn't know what I was getting myself into. To my surprise, by December the children were speaking Hawaiian. And gosh, I realized it does acmally work," she said. "Initially, we tried so mueh to be accepted by the education system because immersion was such a different approach. We kept telling everybody that we teach just as in English except we do it in Hawaiian. And now after 12 years, we are at the point where we are asking if we still want to be the same," Wilhelm added. Because the immersion school program depends largely on Hawaiian translations of Western textbooks, the eunieulum is similar to that offered by other schools. Wilhelm said, "The challenge

ahead is to create unique materials. In recent years, because our funding has not increased with the rise in the number of children, we have not had the funds to develop materials. In high school, after 6th grade, it is pretty sad to see the few materials we have in Hawaiian." Acquiring Westem translations is a lengthy process as it ean take years to obtain the rights from authors.

Wilhelm's mission, quality education in an immersion setting, is to give more instead of less. The success of the program comes down to good teachers, "What ean we do with limited funds that have the most impact? Training, I think. We get grade-level teachers together at least onee a year so we ean share what we do. In my opinion, no matter how

many people are translating, it still very mueh depends on the classroom teacher," she explained. In the last three years, the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa graduated the first cadre of teachers trained specifically for immersion. "Most of their classes are at the immersion schools. It is interesting to see the kind of people who are coming out now because they have so mueh more

experience than we had. In the past some teachers had no idea of what immersion was, or what it is suppose to be," she said. Wilhelm has Schools Superintendent Dr. Paul LeMahieu's support. She said she is fortunate to have a superintendent who understands the big picture — what Hawaiian means and its plaee in the edu-

cational system. "Since he has been superintendent I have been involved in a lot more with Native Hawaiian children in the education system and Hawaiian studies in the state system," said Wilhelm. For years, the immersion program had to fight for support. "Now it's different; immersion is in the forefront and people are making efforts to support it. All of a sudden, we have offers of partnerships from KSBE, the universities and foundations," Wilhelm explained. "KSBE's new focus is to try to be more responsive to community needs. Dr. McCubbin and the interim trustees clearly want to support Hawaiian children in whatever way they ean. I talked to Dr. McCubbin about creating oral histories as classroom material, and he's all for it." The 'Ohana Foundation is also donating computers and will create Hawaiian studies DVDs to use for class materials. In July, the DOE will recruit a new staff of seven to develop curriculum and frame the immersion program. They will enhanee the work that Wilhelm has achieved on her own. These changes present a dilemma Wilhelm welcomes and one that will propel the immersion program into a new phase with more funding and staff. "When you are poor it's easier because your needs are simple. When you win a million dollars then what are you going to do? Good meaningful projects that have an impact in the classroom," declared Wilhelm. ■

Puanani Wilheim and summer school students at Anuenue School discuss the eultural uses of an 'ilima plant at the Pālolo Valley campus. phoīo: manu boyd