Student Engagement and Hawaiian Culture/ Project bAsed Learning

Within a generation of twenty-five years we see a thriving Lāhui where our learners achieve postsecondary educational success, enabling good life and career choices. We also envision that our learners will be grounded in Christian and Hawaiian values and will be leaders who contribute to their communities, both locally and globally."

KS Strategic Vision 2040, Kū Hānauna: A Generation on the Rise (KS Strategic Plan 2020)

People who have been around the Kamehameha Schools system for longer than a month begin to realize that there are a lot of acronyms to keep track of. The one that has been ubiquitous this year, however is, WCHCBE (World Class Hawaiian Culture Based Education). In short, Kamehameha Schools is working to become truly one of a kind by combing the most cutting edge practices in education with the traditions and heritage of Hawaiian culture.

This flummoxed me. How do you combine World Class and Hawaiian Culture? This is why I agreed to join the first cohort of Kealaʻula. I wanted to better understand and exlore HOW to integrate Hawaiian culture into my classroom.

At some point this year our institution's CEO Jack Wong and Executive Vice President of Education, Dr. Robert Holoua Stender visited the Maui campus. Both talked about the central missions of Kamehameha Schools while addressing the faculty. CEO Wong focused on three main points, and it was his first point that so impacted me, and drove me to pursue my questions in full. He stated that at Kamehameha Schools, we should be working towards a mentality where CULTURE DRIVES ACADEMICS. Emphasis on the active state of culture in that sentence. In other words, culture is not an add-on or supplement to Kamehameha Schools. Culture should be the force that drives us. Additionally, Dr. Stender revisited the tri-campus tactical plan. The sole component that was common throughout each of the four tactics was the integration of Hawaiian culture.

There are dozens of “world class” institutions in the world. Our Kealaʻula cohort saw examples of these at both our retreat or “advance” on Oʻahu at the start of the program, and also during their R&D trip to San Fransisco. These were fantastic opportunities to see world class learning environments. The challenge for Kamehameha, however, is how do you then create an environment where the world class component is being DRIVEN by culture? What I felt I needed as an educator at Kamehameha Schools could not be achieved by only looking at schools that exemplify the attributes of a “world class institution.” As CEO Wong stated, we need to move away from the mindset of “culture or academics.” Instead, we need to examine HOW culture DRIVES academics. Drives. He stated that our haumāna cannot become global leaders if they donʻt understand the origin of their roots. In addition how are they to become global citizens and contributors if some struggle to even understand how to best mālama themselves or their ʻohana?

Hawaiian culture based goes beyond a cursory understanding of Hawaiian history, or cultural practices. Hawaiian Culture BASED needs to be the foundation of everything, not simply a supplement to a foreign paradigm.

Therefore, I saw my work cut out for me. How can I begin to create a learning environment that allows students the opportunities to use their Hawaiian cultural identity as the foundation to project based learning opportunities? And furthermore, how would this impact student engagement?