About We

This is a picture of my grandmother's garden,

a menagerie of shells, rocks,

abandoned toys, driftwood

a lone skateboard wheel.

Every day, my grandparents would walk the two miles along the coast to Kaʻanapali and while grandpa sat on the bench to watch the water, grandma would walk the beach picking up more "seeds" for her garden. 

This garden ran the length of the house from her bedroom to the kitchen door. 

This is the story of me, both as that face shaped rock that she picked up, but also as a grandmother now, it is about the "seeds" I look for and pick up. Things that maybe are not worth much to someone else, but let me show you what makes each thing sacred. This is my treasure, this is what I teach from, this is whom I teach for and about. 

As a native Hawaiian teacher who teaches through a lens that privileges my grandmother's garden, I teach through aloha ʻāina, a Hawaiian moʻo pedagogy and praxis of sustainability, metaphor, generational knowledge, ancestral memory and sacredness of "we." I may stand in front of you barefoot and alone, but I bring with me multitudes. Welina.