Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 32, Number 3, 1 March 2015 — A call for culturally relevant educational progroms for Hawaiian students [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A call for culturally relevant educational progroms for Hawaiian students

Aloha from Kaua'i and Ni'ihau! B e f o r e coming to OHA, I was a teacher for many years. There are some very important lessons I learned as an educator, lessons that I wish everyone could have a ehanee to learn. There are two 'ōlelo no'eau that capture these lessons I leamed very well ..." 'A'ohe pau ka 'ike i ka hālau ho'okahi" (all

knowledge is not learned in just one school) and "Ma ka hana ka 'ike" (in working one leams.) While teaching, it heeame very clear to me that all children do not leam the same and some children who do not perform well in a classroom setting actually excelled when put into altemative settings where they could be outdoors, leam about our culture and engage in physical activities. We know that our Hawaiian culture was based on oral histories. Prior to westem contact, our kūpuna did not use books and essays to teach or gauge the progress of education. Our kūpuna leamed by doing, ma ka hana ka 'ike. Don't get me wrong, I am not arguing that books or mainstream classrooms are bad or are not invaluable resources. But, we should not be so quick to deflne our keiki who excel in other settings as ehikken with "disabilities," because in fact, our culture prescribes a different way of teaching and, in effect, leaming. Our kūpuna used methodology that embraced hands-on,

pragmatic approaches involving our natural environment. And as I hear buzzwords being used throughout government, such as "sustainability," "food security" and "mālama 'āina" it leads me to ask ... what if we stopped disconnecting our students from their natural environment by putting them in walled classrooms six to eight hours per day? And actually let them learn what "mālama 'āina" and "sustainabil-

ity" meant by letting them leam on the land and in the oeean? At the very least, what if we did this especially for those students who are not performing well in mainstream classroom settings? I believe we have begun to answer these questions by embracing altemative leaming settings such as 'āina-based education programs. Numerous programs throughout the state have shown that students who have been labeled as having "disabilities" and "disorders" ean excel if given the proper environment and tools. However, these types of programs need and deserve more of our attention and resources, because as our kūpuna said, " 'A'ohe pau ka 'ike i ka hālau ho'okahi." With that, I would like to shout out to all the charter and immersion schools and other institutions that have implemented 'āinabased or place-based learning programs and have found creative ways to embrace our Hawaiian keiki and 'ōpio who are great thinkers but thrive in settings that emphasize our culture and environment. Holomua e nā pōki'i! ■

Dan Ahuna VicE Chair, TrustEE, Kaua'i and Ni'ihau