Transcript
Speaker: Aloha and welcome to episode three in a three-part series on pedagogy in the Hawaiian Islands.
Speaker: My name is Noah Ranslund and I am a student from the University of Massachusetts Amherst working as a content strategist here at the Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Brian Orem, Julia Rosemary Valenti, and Matthew Thomas Fahey.
Speaker: Mahalo Nui for your ongoing support.
Speaker: You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, or find us on x slash Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube.
Speaker: Over the summer, Chris had put me in contact with Dr. Amber Strong Makayao, a specialist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa College of Education Institute for Teacher Education Secondary Program, and the head of professional development at the Hana Haoli School in Honolulu.
Speaker: She invited me to come visit the school, and that experience guided my research and focus during the summer project.
Speaker: I visited the school multiple times over the course of the summer, spending time digging through their archives and exploring various different aspects of life at Hana Haolis.
Speaker: After having been given the opportunity to see what progressive education in Hawaii really looks like, I wanted to share with you all my experience and the plethora of other experiences of the students and faculty at the school.
Speaker: The series has been building up to this episode, where we will look into the work being done at Hana Haoli and what progressive pedagogy in Hawaii looks like in practice.
Speaker: First, here's Amber to tell you a little bit about the history of the school.
Speaker: So there was a couple living in Hawaii, Sophie Judd Cook and George Cook.
Speaker: And this is around the turn of the century, around the early 1900s.
Speaker: And they were living on the island of Molokai and they had a number of children.
Speaker: And Sophie was not a formal educator, but had learned a lot about raciomelia approaches to teaching and learning and was homeschooling her own children using those approaches.
Speaker: Her husband, George, became very interested in government and he got elected to the Hawaii state legislature to be a representative from Maui County and the family had to move to the island of Oahu.
Speaker: And when they got to Oahu, they decided, well, we should send our kids to a formal school.
Speaker: And we're looking around and a lot of the schooling options at the time were very traditional.
Speaker: They were reflective of the industrialization that was happening at that era.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Serendipitously, there was a woman who was traveling across the country.
Speaker: She was a fourth grade teacher at the Francis Parker School in Chicago.
Speaker: And she was giving public lectures about how children could learn how to read from being in storytelling rich environments, rather than memorizing words and letters from basal readers.
Speaker: And Sophie went and attended her public lecture in Honolulu at Washington Place.
Speaker: She was enthralled with it.
Speaker: There's probably lots of parallels between what she was listening to this woman.
Speaker: Her name was Goodwin Thorne Thompson, what she was talking about and what Sophie believed in terms of the Reggio Emilia approach and went up to the woman after the lecture and said, I just adore this.
Speaker: I'd love for my children to learn in this way.
Speaker: And she said, well, why don't you start a school of your own?
Speaker: And that launched the beginning of Hana Haoli School.
Speaker: Hana Haoli in Hawaiian means joyous work.
Speaker: It was named by
Speaker: Sophie's brother.
Speaker: And from the very beginning, the creation of Honolulu in Honolulu in 1918 was a collaboration between the cooks, as well as many folks from the Francis Parker School and John Dewey and George Meade and the superintendent of the state of Hawaii of public schools, the fledgling University of Hawaii.
Speaker: And so from the very start, Hana Haoli was really modeled after John Dewey's experimental school at the University of Chicago, but most primarily after the Francis Parker School in Chicago.
Speaker: And so it has lots of elements of the early East Coast progressive schools overlapping and integrating with Hawaii's unique cultural context.
Speaker: And so that includes just the
Speaker: the physical layout of the school, of having lots of outdoor learning spaces and open courtyards, the integration of multicultural education and multiple language learning, Hawaiian language, Japanese language, French from the very beginning.
Speaker: And so its birth was a really unique venture in the progressive education movement because it stayed true to all of those, the progressive philosophies of Dewey and
Speaker: Hillpatrick and Lucy Sprague Mitchell and all those folks, yet it was adapted to be more reflective of Hawaii's multicultural society.
Speaker: Over the course of this episode, I will include a variety of voices from various students and faculty.
Speaker: To provide some context for what's to come, I'd like to introduce you to the people you're about to hear speak.
Speaker: First is Jennifer Steerly, one of the directors of faculty and curriculum and a current educator.
Speaker: For a parent's perspective, you'll hear from Veronica Kimme, who's also a faculty member.
Speaker: Finally, for the adults, you will hear from Allison Backlig, Director of Admissions at Hana Haoli.
Speaker: And last but not least, you will hear from Raleigh, Hannah, Kaoli, Taylor, and Etta, students across different age groups.
Speaker: In the conception of this project, Amber and I identified a few core values of Hana Haoli.
Speaker: While spending time talking, covered by the canopy, and taking in the warm island air, Amber pointed out to me that not every progressive school is as lush and green as Hana Haoli.
Speaker: In most of the schools she had seen, where they were situated was not a key component of how they operated.
Speaker: Hana Haoli, on the other hand, situated itself squarely within the Hawaiian cultural and physical context.
Speaker: This speaks to one of the values we discussed, that of place-based pedagogy, something I discussed at length with Stacey in episode 2.
Speaker: I guess the first thing that comes to mind is place-based learning, which of course is kind of a buzzword lately, but what an amazing place to have place-based learning.
Speaker: There's such a rich cultural, historical background.
Speaker: And unfortunately, because of the history of colonization,
Speaker: A lot of Hawaiian culture has to be rediscovered and reinvigorated.
Speaker: And, you know, as a person who is not Native Hawaiian, there's so much that I need to learn and am learning.
Speaker: And it's an exciting opportunity for
Speaker: as a teacher to say along with the kids, hey, I don't know this, but I want to know it and I know who I can ask and modeling that for them, that curiosity and valuing where we come from in a certain way.
Speaker: Like I was born here, but I'm not Hawaiian, but I feel like I come from this place to a certain level.
Speaker: So I need to honor that and respect that.
Speaker: And then also,
Speaker: Yeah, I guess really with the wonderings, like what else can we learn about where we are?
Speaker: How else can we connect?
Speaker: How else can we honor this place where we are?
Speaker: The students are acutely aware of this as well, highlighting Hawaiian traditions as some of their favorite experiences at Hanaoli.
Speaker: I really love Makahiki, which is basically Christmas, but Hawaiian, we give authoring, we do dance it, Hawaiian dances, chants.
Speaker: It's really fun.
Speaker: I think it's really cool that we get to do Hawaiian things and it makes me feel connected to Hawaiians.
Speaker: And this year they said fifth grade and fourth grade is going to be like the spotlight of Makahiki, so I'm excited to do that.
Speaker: In line with this understanding of place, Hana Haoli takes a different approach to how it forms its curriculum.
Speaker: One of the key elements of Hawaiian pedagogy that showed up time and time again in my research was learning by doing.
Speaker: Just as Dr. Tsai addressed in episode one, project-based learning has been essential to the success of the Hawaiian education system, and Hana Haoli has carried this model into the era of worksheets and standardized testing.
Speaker: Rather than conforming to this new epoch, Hana Haoli has continued to pioneer a project-based model with lots of room for reflection and creativity.
Speaker: When I joined Hana Haoli and was teaching in second and third grade, they had the curriculum was built so that there were already a lot of projects that were incorporated into the learning, into the curriculum, in order to really give kids experiences and to understand
Speaker: you get at their understanding.
Speaker: So one of them that I think is pretty unique and fun and valuable is a kid city project where as part of their unit learning on families, schools and communities, the children design and create a city in the classroom.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Since they have the unique setup of three different classrooms or home groups in one large space, the kids take over that entire space for maybe the course of a week.
Speaker: But before that even happens, the kids are planning, what does a community need?
Speaker: What is a community?
Speaker: How can we show that?
Speaker: How can we make a functional community?
Speaker: What do we want in this community to make it the best it possibly can be?
Speaker: So after they've done the research by going on learning trips, having guest speakers, doing interviews, reading, watching videos,
Speaker: they decide upon the elements of their city and gather materials that they need, map out where different parts are going to be.
Speaker: Oh, we need a bank here because it's a safe place to have a bank.
Speaker: Or we definitely need a grocery store because our community members need to eat.
Speaker: So that's one of the amazing projects that has been done in second and third year.
Speaker: In fourth and fifth, it looks a little different.
Speaker: I'm coming more recently from the fourth and fifth grade classroom.
Speaker: A project that we've done a few times now is a nonviolent direct action project.
Speaker: And with that, the children are learning, I mean, with all the projects that we do at Hanaholi, they're
Speaker: really learning about a larger concept.
Speaker: So in this one, they're learning about social justice, they're learning about being a change maker in their communities.
Speaker: So kids have some freedom to decide
Speaker: what the focus of their nonviolent direct action is going to be.
Speaker: And they've also, before this, learned some basics about the civil rights movement.
Speaker: They're fourth and fifth graders, so they don't understand or get into all the complexities and the history of it, but they have a grounding in that and where this idea comes from.
Speaker: And they learn about Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from a Birmingham jail and
Speaker: they decide what action they would like to take.
Speaker: They collaborate with each other on how they might take this action, whom it will affect and how their intended outcomes, what they might do if their action is not successful.
Speaker: So through the different age levels and developmental stages, kids are doing different types of projects to really show what they understand and
Speaker: develop their understanding.
Speaker: And I also like all the work and like how it feels so accomplished and good when you get everything done.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: I'm same with Hannah.
Speaker: I like all the traditions and how we do them.
Speaker: And then I also like how we do like learning by doing.
Speaker: So that just seems nice to me.
Speaker: Same.
Speaker: Can you guys explain that?
Speaker: What that means?
Speaker: So like, for me, it's more of like, I do this, and then sometimes we'll do like a reflection about it.
Speaker: So it's like, we reflect, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah, I like the reflecting, except sometimes I think it's hard for me to remember, like sometimes.
Speaker: So I like to take notes sometimes of like what's happened and stuff like, yeah, just so I know and I have something to reflect on.
Speaker: My favorite unit is the food unit because we would get to like go to Mattson or like a food product place, like center.
Speaker: or like factory, and they would give us like a pack.
Speaker: And my favorite like project is when we had our ocean creatures and we got to research our creatures and then write about them and drop pictures.
Speaker: My favorite unit was personally Mandarin because
Speaker: I'm half Chinese and I get to explore more of who I am.
Speaker: And my favorite project in it was, we kind of had this idea of this artist named Ai Weiwei, and we made a project based off of something like him.
Speaker: I created like a zodiac animal in his style, or yeah, and I did it with
Speaker: Right, classmates.
Speaker: I don't remember any of the big projects, but there is this one, I wouldn't call it a project, but I would call it an activity.
Speaker: So one day we had this thing called Black and White School, which was school from like when you were in school, like the rose kind.
Speaker: And that was in actually the pavilion where we have our assemblies and stuff.
Speaker: And then we did Orange and White School in the back of our classroom where we did like a lot of stuff and we made stuff up the bell and it was really cool.
Speaker: One of the breaks
Speaker: big projects that we did in the ocean unit that I really enjoyed was like we would put all of our like all of our facts and stuff that we learned into like a book that we would write.
Speaker: And for me, that was really fun because I like to author and write.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to add on to that.
Speaker: I really like to author and write, too.
Speaker: But then we got to choose, like, our top animals that we liked, like our top five animals that we liked.
Speaker: And then the teachers gave us one of those options.
Speaker: And then we had to study that animal and, like Raleigh said, make it into a book.
Speaker: Can I interject?
Speaker: Do you mind telling him about what it means to be an author and the authoring process?
Speaker: I think it's a good example of... Well, what we do here, which is similar out in what authors would do, we would write our draft and then we would self-edit with a friend or a partner and then we would like
Speaker: After that, we would take it to our teacher and she would be like our editor and then she would edit for us.
Speaker: And then after we got everything edited, we would put it into a big, not a big book, but we would bind it and stuff after we did it.
Speaker: Well, we have to, then we have to write it on pages after we edit.
Speaker: We have to write it on these certain pages.
Speaker: You can choose if you want a big book or a small book, but you can't keep switching back and forth.
Speaker: And so we had to like write our story again with all the edits onto the paper.
Speaker: So we basically wrote our story like two times.
Speaker: And then the teacher would laminate our covers, bind it.
Speaker: We would do the about the author and dedication.
Speaker: We would choose the order and stuff.
Speaker: It was really fun and cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Hana Haoli, at more than a century old, is a school steeped in tradition.
Speaker: Another value we identified, the traditions provide a sense of continuity, progress, and vision to the students as they spend each year building on the last.
Speaker: To start, one of the most well-known traditions is the stepping stone, where each student carves a stone with their passions, memories, or anything in between to be immortalized on a stone path in the courtyard of the school.
Speaker: There's a ceremony where each student steps over the stones signifying the end of their journeys at Hana Haoli.
Speaker: I want to put some like waves on my stepping stone because one of my main passions is swimming.
Speaker: So I want to like do some ocean themed stuff.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: I thought maybe since I like volleyball, maybe I could do like a big volleyball and then like in the lines, I could do like other things that I like.
Speaker: Something I want to put on my stepping stone.
Speaker: is my passions and what I love to do and what I love to eat.
Speaker: What would you want to put on it if you were going to show your passions?
Speaker: Like a musubi skateboarding and football.
Speaker: It made me like my favorite show.
Speaker: I would go with the original of what most kids do.
Speaker: I think I don't want to put one big
Speaker: that represents me in the middle, for example, like one of my passions, I'm not sure about that yet.
Speaker: And on the sides, maybe I'll put like hopeful words for me.
Speaker: So one day if I come back, I'll look at my stepping stone and remember what I did.
Speaker: I think I do a tennis ball, yeah, or like symbols that show what I like to do.
Speaker: Here are some other traditions that made the students and teachers particularly excited.
Speaker: One of my favorite traditions that I haven't done yet, but it's like always so exciting is, so we do this thing where we would grow like a mini Christmas tree and then the sixth graders would cut it down.
Speaker: And I always feel like joy watching them cut it because I know one day that will be me.
Speaker: And like everyone's working together and I love teamwork.
Speaker: And then it's just also really joyful because while the sixth graders are cutting it, everyone else is watching and like singing Christmas songs.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: And then I also love holiday program.
Speaker: It's really fun for me to dance, perform, and then get all like clapping.
Speaker: And it just feels so good once you've accomplished it.
Speaker: So every year after the performances, I always get kind of sad that it's over.
Speaker: And then I also love holiday program.
Speaker: It's really fun for me to dance, perform, and then get all like clapping and it just feels so good once you've accomplished it.
Speaker: So every year after the performances, I always get kind of sad that it's over.
Speaker: Also, on the last day of school, I love the slipper toss.
Speaker: We wear slippers to school, and then we take off our slippers, and then we count down the last 10 seconds of the school year, and we go 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then when we say go, we throw our slippers up in the air towards the flagpole, and then at the end, we all run and go find our slippers.
Speaker: That's how we end the year.
Speaker: Can you think of some other traditions to tell them about?
Speaker: Um, yeah, so one we do is another, like, big program.
Speaker: We do May Day, and so we'll do, like, the sixth graders will do the maple dance, everyone will do songs, and sometimes we'll do dances.
Speaker: Like, last time, last year, we did a Filipino dance to Nicolink.
Speaker: So like the bamboo poles would go in and out and we would have to dance in between them.
Speaker: So that's really fun.
Speaker: So it would go out, out, out, wait, out, out, in, out, out, and your foot has to be up in the air when it goes in.
Speaker: And then you tap your foot in the middle for the duh, duh, or out, out.
Speaker: And we would have to like pay attention to the sticks and try not to get our feet smashed.
Speaker: And then we would have to dance with our partner according to the pattern.
Speaker: Tell them the name of it again.
Speaker: To Nicolay.
Speaker: In Tagalog.
Speaker: So, and then, it's just really fun holiday program.
Speaker: And then another, like, tradition?
Speaker: Tradition, yeah, we do is...
Speaker: Sorry, I forget of some of my art traditions.
Speaker: There's like birthday books and the Olympics and flag and assembly.
Speaker: Do you want to say about any of those?
Speaker: Olympics, that's what I was saying.
Speaker: Okay, tell them about the Olympics.
Speaker: Olympics is like, well, first, the sixth graders do like Greek oratories and they have groups and stuff.
Speaker: And then after that, they do the Olympics, like the Greek Olympics, but we do...
Speaker: it like upon holy olympics um so it's like running hurdles javelins um sometimes they will do um what's it called they would do um 40 year dash there's a long jump it's really fun yeah
Speaker: And then there's also birthday books.
Speaker: Birthday books is when it's your birthday, you have the option to choose a book.
Speaker: And you make a plate that says, this birthday book is the gift of blanks.
Speaker: So-and-so's.
Speaker: Birthday.
Speaker: Like blank birthday on the date of their birthday and then the year.
Speaker: And then now... You get to, like, decorate the... You get to glue it into the book, and then that lives in the library.
Speaker: So then, like, if you come back or something, like, and you open up a book, then... You can find your birthday book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's, like, a good memory to have.
Speaker: It's, like... Where's...
Speaker: There's also flag and assembly.
Speaker: Assemblies, you sit, there's plays, productions.
Speaker: It's really fun.
Speaker: And then flag, we do the Pledge of Allegiance, and we have announcements and thought of the day.
Speaker: Can you say what the thought of the day is really quick?
Speaker: Well, sometimes there's like, the canoes and the island, and the island is the canoe.
Speaker: But other days, maybe it will be like the old short prayer and the new short prayer.
Speaker: Today, may beautiful things happen to you.
Speaker: Or let us honor this day.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then sometimes we'll do like poe or fourth and fifth this year.
Speaker: Like what we're in.
Speaker: We're going to be doing Mandarin that other day or Manao Opala.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: These traditions, as you might have noticed, are often sourced from across the spectrum of different identities and cultures that make up the Hawaiian melting pot spanning the Pacific and beyond.
Speaker: At Hana Haoli, students learn olelo Hawaii, as well as Mandarin, somewhat recently taking the place of Japanese.
Speaker: Students are exposed to a variety of cultures and develop a rich understanding of the peoples present in the Hawaiian Islands.
Speaker: This reflects a cultural responsiveness that Hana Haoli strives for.
Speaker: The school seeks to give students the opportunity to reflect their own culture in their education.
Speaker: Yeah, so my husband and I are both of mixed ethnicities.
Speaker: And I would say that we both feel like we don't know enough about, you know, the cultures of our ancestors.
Speaker: And I do feel like my daughter learns more about our families, you know, the cultures that make
Speaker: up our family more than we know, than we know how to share, you know, with our kids.
Speaker: For example, my husband's a quarter native Hawaiian, but doesn't know very much about Hawaiian history or even Hawaiian culture.
Speaker: And I feel like she learns that here in school and she brings that home to us.
Speaker: You know, I'm a quarter Japanese and I don't know anything about being Japanese.
Speaker: And she's involved in so many like Japanese traditions at school.
Speaker: And this place, I think, does a really great job of like embracing many different cultures.
Speaker: And really, they just ask families to like share what is special to them, you know, and what share about yourselves.
Speaker: And so, you know, like we get to learn about so many different cultures just through other families sharing.
Speaker: And I love that.
Speaker: And I love that like kids really feel a lot of pride for who they are and for how they're different from one another.
Speaker: And kids are genuinely interested in learning about, you know, each other's differences.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's in our mission statement, in our beliefs and values, we do state explicitly that we value diversity, that it is not just something that exists, but that we value and celebrate it.
Speaker: I think within the classroom, within all our little daily routines, we have built in ways to honor and celebrate our differences.
Speaker: We honor children's voice and perspective.
Speaker: We welcome families into the classroom and onto campus.
Speaker: We have a lot of celebration of different cultural traditions.
Speaker: When a family brings a cultural tradition or celebration to the classroom, we make a big deal.
Speaker: It's awesome.
Speaker: We love to learn about each other.
Speaker: As far as
Speaker: Differences, I think, is something that's addressed in all ages, like from JK to, oh, that's same, same, and that's different, to sixth grade when they're really exploring their personal identity and figuring out who they are in a larger society.
Speaker: That's a question that always comes up, and that's always something that we explore with the kids, and we celebrate, and we honor who they are as people, not just as students.
Speaker: This exposure to a variety of cultures serves a multitude of purposes, one of which is reflecting the quote-unquote real world back at the students.
Speaker: Contrary to the belief that progressive education creates a bubble, Hanaoli strives to expose students to the complexities of real life and the often complicated ways in which people interact.
Speaker: I asked how the educators and parent I spoke to prepare their kids for the quote-unquote real world, as is often considered the goal of education.
Speaker: To them, the distinction between school and the real world was not quite so rigid.
Speaker: I think as a teacher, something I always strive to remember is that when I was a child, what I was feeling and what I was thinking was real to me at that time.
Speaker: You know, as a child, you don't understand all the complexities of life.
Speaker: You don't understand so much.
Speaker: But what you do know, that's authentic to you.
Speaker: So I guess it's my way of saying I want to respect the experiences of kids.
Speaker: Like whatever they are feeling and whatever they are thinking, that is true to them at that moment.
Speaker: So that is their real world.
Speaker: That is their real life.
Speaker: And so school, again, it's not a mirror of their life.
Speaker: It is their life.
Speaker: This is the place where they spend so much of their time.
Speaker: This is where their friends are.
Speaker: This is their experience.
Speaker: So helping them understand that this is a safe place where they are valued, but also they're expanding their understanding of the world in school.
Speaker: And we don't wanna have like a barrier between this is school and this is life or this is school and this is the world.
Speaker: So as much as we can help them find connections to the bigger world, I don't wanna say the outside world, but like just the bigger world that their worlds, their lives are expanding, I guess is our job and to keep them
Speaker: curious and to keep them safe while they do that is my goal as a teacher.
Speaker: Um, so, you know, the kind of schools that I went to were, you know, pretty traditional.
Speaker: And, um, I would say that I was a good student.
Speaker: I was good at school.
Speaker: Um, but I don't feel like it prepared me for, you know, being like a flexible problem solver.
Speaker: And I think that this school environment really does support that in my daughter.
Speaker: I love that she's already really good at collaborating with others.
Speaker: And that when she's given an open-ended assignment, that it's not like,
Speaker: overwhelming or that she's not unmotivated, you know, but rather she's like excited to, you know, to jump in and explore what she's genuinely interested in.
Speaker: And I think that those are like,
Speaker: perspectives or outlooks that you need to be successful in this world today.
Speaker: So I really feel like it, the way that the school approaches learning is very reflective of how we live our lives as adults.
Speaker: And so it really supports her in that way.
Speaker: Um, it also like a lot of the structures here in the school, you know, involve like a lot of student choice and, um, you know, a lot of like freedom for kids to do, to, to, you know, pursue what they're interested in.
Speaker: Um, and I love that.
Speaker: I think that that's going to help her a lot in her future.
Speaker: Instead of having stratified age groups, Hana Haoli promotes relationships between students across age groups, allowing for students to mentor and care for each other no matter their age.
Speaker: When I spoke to the students, this was one of the aspects of their experience at Hana Haoli that excited them the most.
Speaker: Well, you know, just by nature of the age, there's a ton of growth that's happened since she was four until now she's eight.
Speaker: But it's been really fun to see her evolve from...
Speaker: you know, because of the multi-age structure of the classes here, it's been fun to watch her enter a class as a newcomer.
Speaker: We call them enterings in their first year and then continuings in their second year.
Speaker: It's been fun to watch her, you know, personality and perspective change from the way she approaches school as an entering to how she approaches it in her continuing year.
Speaker: the first multi-age grouping here is in kindergarten and first grade.
Speaker: And she loved being and entering in that grouping.
Speaker: The class is called Kakuna Okala.
Speaker: And she's used to being the baby in the family.
Speaker: She's got two older sisters I mentioned, who are actually significantly older than her.
Speaker: And it comes naturally for her to, you know, ask for help and
Speaker: She enjoys the attention that comes with being the baby, but it doesn't come as naturally for her to be, you know, to
Speaker: be empathetic to others, to, you know, choose her, to choose things based on the examples that it sets, you know, and so it was really fun to see her take on the role of the continuing and, you know, to be a supporter to younger students.
Speaker: And this coming year, she'll be a continuing in her
Speaker: in the second multi-age grouping, it's called Kula Evie, second and third grade.
Speaker: And I'm excited to see how she approaches, you know, approaches it this year, too.
Speaker: I think it'll be totally different.
Speaker: So it's for me, I think it's fun, like interesting and fun.
Speaker: And then it's like this year, our teachers are like really pushing us to be diverse.
Speaker: So that also helps us not just be like boys and girls or, you know, like stuff like that, but like different grades or we call them enterings where like the young grade and continuance for the older grade.
Speaker: So I feel like that just gives one more step into being diverse, which is really important.
Speaker: Yeah, I really like it because I feel like I can go to one of the continuings if I'm entering and if I need any help or a question or if the teachers aren't available and I can ask them my question and I feel comfortable doing that.
Speaker: And then if I am a continuing, I like getting the questions from the enterings because I know that they're following my footsteps and learning like I did.
Speaker: And I think that that's really cool.
Speaker: And then the only two grades that are not mixed grade is sixth grade and junior kindergarten.
Speaker: Or JK.
Speaker: But I would say that they kind of mix together because we have like sixth grade buddies and JK buddies.
Speaker: So like the sixth grade would have a JK buddy.
Speaker: And so they're like together kind of.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And then there's also reading buddies, which or fourth and fifth grade do with Kukuna or kindergarten and first grade.
Speaker: So that's really cool.
Speaker: We get to every Wednesday afternoon after lunch.
Speaker: We read.
Speaker: We read to our reading buddies and that's really nice.
Speaker: For 30 minutes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Something that probably I'm excited to do is get
Speaker: a JK buddy, because I really want like a little JK buddy so I can like make stuff for them.
Speaker: JK is like the littlest class of Hana Haoli and when you're in the highest class of Hana Haoli, you get to have
Speaker: a buddy from the lowest class.
Speaker: I like how when I was younger, or when I was in the younger age, the older kids treated me really respectfully.
Speaker: So I have kind of, I look that year, or I'm an older kid now, but I used to look forward to helping the little kids and
Speaker: having a big responsibility.
Speaker: So, oh, and in third and second grade, you get like a buddy.
Speaker: It's usually second and third grades.
Speaker: And they're basically like the people you work with the most.
Speaker: So yeah, that's pretty fun.
Speaker: I think the experience with fourth and fifth graders is
Speaker: You can ask anybody and they're always going to be able to help you.
Speaker: You can't just the people that are older than you.
Speaker: Not only do multi-age classrooms prepare students for a world not stratified by age, but it also promotes a sense of community.
Speaker: Across various Hawaiian pedagogies, one of the most important shared elements is that of ohana, or family.
Speaker: These are the communities we fall back on, the people we build our lives with, both blood and chosen.
Speaker: Hana Haoli, rather than individualizing the education of the students, allows parents to be active participants.
Speaker: However, unlike the often dog-whistled notion of parental rights, parents are not expected to restrict their child's knowledge intake, but rather learn, as an ohana, what it means to explore the world as a learner.
Speaker: This is so important, in fact, that it is one of the key elements of the admissions process at Hana Haoli.
Speaker: You know, when a child is three and a half or four and a half years old,
Speaker: They're little, they're gonna, they're all going to be little kids, but they all do have an interest, a unique personality that we can kind of see at that age.
Speaker: So we look for just a variety of personalities of children.
Speaker: We look for if they show us different interests, you know, in terms of the children, if they're able to follow directions and kind of stay with the group.
Speaker: If it looks like they might need more needs, you know, then we're able to provide in terms of
Speaker: maybe needing a smaller group size or attention in a specific way, then that might be an indicator that maybe it wouldn't be a good fit.
Speaker: We also look to the parents and their response and their understanding of this school and their interest and willingness to participate.
Speaker: Parents enjoy a variety of ways to involve themselves in their children's education.
Speaker: So this school is extraordinary in the
Speaker: number of opportunities that they create for families to be really actively involved in their kids' school experiences.
Speaker: You know, there are a gazillion learning trips a year that parents can chaperone.
Speaker: There are tons of fun activities in the classroom that they ask for extra hands with.
Speaker: They invite families to come and, you know, present about things that they're familiar with or things that are related to the topics that the students are exploring in their units.
Speaker: Parents come to campus.
Speaker: I mean, any given day, you'll see many parents on campus just for our morning flag gatherings and our Friday assemblies.
Speaker: It's a really welcoming community.
Speaker: And so and I work part time for the school.
Speaker: And so I actually have the luxury of having a lot of time that I can commit to.
Speaker: to volunteering in the classroom, you know, and doing that stuff as a parent.
Speaker: And then I also, as a employee of the school, I have a really close relationship with all of her teachers and all of her classmates.
Speaker: I supervise recess, you know, a couple times a week and I get to see, I get to be a fly on the wall quite often, you know.
Speaker: So I feel really lucky that I get to be such a big part of her school experience.
Speaker: Yeah, there's so many different ways that family, I mean, family is an essential part of our school culture.
Speaker: If we took that out, it would not be the same school.
Speaker: From the moment, well, most of our families come in as JK families, not all, but the majority.
Speaker: There are elements set up to welcome them and to educate them about our values as a school and also asking them to be involved in their child's education.
Speaker: I'll paraphrase, but there is a statement in our beliefs saying that we believe the parent or the family is the first and foremost educator of the child.
Speaker: And so I think we try to live that with, especially in the lower elementary, parents are often,
Speaker: ask to come in as experts and being an expert can be, you know, I am an expert at growing banana plants and I'm going to teach the kids about how to grow banana plants.
Speaker: And it can be really simple as that.
Speaker: But we're we're showing the kids that we value their families.
Speaker: We value their families, knowledge and traditions and cultural knowledge and experiences.
Speaker: We have our HUI, which is kind of like a big version of a PTA, but it's everyone.
Speaker: It's teachers, staff, families.
Speaker: We are all together.
Speaker: We're all trying to be informed.
Speaker: We're all trying to be involved.
Speaker: So big and small ways, we're always trying to build our school community on that relationship of families are part of our school and school depends on our families.
Speaker: Well, a specific example of a really, you know, really engaging family project that she just had in this last year was the class's theme is, you know, in Kula Ivi, they're exploring their island home.
Speaker: And the learning trips throughout the year involved
Speaker: going to, you know, many different places around the island and exploring the geography and thinking about, you know, just all about this place.
Speaker: But they asked families to identify a place that they had never been to, preferably on this island, but maybe on another island, you know, while you're on vacation, and to approach it like a learning trip, a family learning trip, and then to do a little reflection on it together.
Speaker: And they compiled all of the reflections together and made a book of all of these places on the island that you could visit that other, you know, classmates had gone to with their families.
Speaker: And so we, you know, found a part of the beach on the island that we had never been to that's got, you know,
Speaker: and is pretty well known for having a lot of wildlife.
Speaker: And we had the most amazing day and loved writing about it and sharing photos.
Speaker: And we've got this book now of all these cool places and hikes that we want to check out, that even my older kids look at all the time and are like, hey, we got to go to this beach.
Speaker: Remember?
Speaker: Remember so-and-so was talking about that place?
Speaker: Let's go to it.
Speaker: So yeah, that's like one of many opportunities
Speaker: that they present families with, you know, to get really involved.
Speaker: But I also find that the school has kind of taught me to also like respect and honor her space and her initiative to pursue things that she's interested in and to, you know, drive her own learning.
Speaker: And I would say that in a lot of ways, I was more actively,
Speaker: like engaged with my older children's learning than I am with hers in the sense that I want to give her that room, you know, to like to pursue the things that she's interested in, what she's learning about in school without, you know, me
Speaker: you know, being involved in it.
Speaker: And I think she likes that too.
Speaker: And I think that's another cool thing about the school, you know, that they really instill in kids, you know, desire to learn and to explore the things that they're interested in.
Speaker: Well, and I think another piece that I've learned, you know, I experienced last year was my first year as director of admissions.
Speaker: And I saw that
Speaker: The process set up prior to my becoming director of admissions was just fabulous.
Speaker: What we do is we not only have small group play sessions with teachers, but we ask families to, the parents to join in small groups and
Speaker: And to learn about how we teach here, to learn about how we center on children, to learn more about progressivism and learn about John Dewey or learn about how our school was founded.
Speaker: So we have like four sessions running at a time while the students or the children are with teachers in classrooms.
Speaker: Parents are going to their own classrooms.
Speaker: They're maybe doing a movement
Speaker: dance activity and expressing themselves through responding to music and then reflecting and or they might be in a social emotional group in the art room with our school counselor sharing about feelings or sharing about parenting and then relating that to how we how we teach here and how we acknowledge the the whole child or they might be with our librarian
Speaker: in the library learning about the beliefs and the practices here and what it looks like from the early ages, the junior kindergarten and all the way to sixth grade.
Speaker: So the cool thing about that is
Speaker: The parents are as excited or more excited than the children in their experience.
Speaker: They're like, wow, I really, I'm understanding this a little bit more.
Speaker: I'm loving this, or I want this for my child.
Speaker: Or they might come away, you know, those who don't want it, they're not necessarily telling me.
Speaker: But I think it's been a really great way of sharing about our school so that families coming in, they know from the start, we're not a traditional family.
Speaker: school, they're not going to be sitting at desks all the time, although we absolutely do use desks and we absolutely do teach skills and we absolutely do look at, you know, growth over time with the children.
Speaker: So those pieces of interviewing and have the parents involved and then also having the parent docents, I think that really shows how our community is totally woven into the fabric of
Speaker: what we do here and how we relate to the world.
Speaker: Okay, I've said a lot.
Speaker: It is important to recognize, however, that the school doesn't exist within a vacuum.
Speaker: Hawaii has one of the lowest rated education systems in the United States.
Speaker: Public schools are often underfunded, understaffed, and don't provide the potential for upward mobility to their students.
Speaker: Hana Haoli, like many of the notable Hawaiian private schools, tends to serve a privileged group.
Speaker: However, they continue to make efforts to expand their student body and push back against the cutthroat competition that defines Hawaiian education today.
Speaker: Here's Allison with more on the admissions process.
Speaker: You know, one of the things we want to do is to reach out to different preschools, really, and that have not typically had children come to us.
Speaker: So one of the things I want to do this year is
Speaker: sort of expand our network or our reach to schools and other areas of the island that have not traditionally, we haven't had applicants from those schools.
Speaker: So that's one idea right now that we have.
Speaker: We have a couple of, you know, half our applicants come from a handful of schools and the other half come from
Speaker: a variety of schools.
Speaker: So I want to plug into those variety of schools to find our applicants.
Speaker: We also are going to have a committee from our board and be looking at financial aid and looking more completely at how do, you know, how our financial aid might support diversity in our school and whether that's
Speaker: adequate or whether we need to make any changes in that.
Speaker: So I think those two ways, reaching out to different schools and then having our board on the other side look at, you know, that aspect.
Speaker: The University of Hawaii has a progressive pedagogy program.
Speaker: And that might be, that's a way we've gotten several teachers, really excellent teachers have joined us.
Speaker: And I'm not sure if that's also a way to expand our, I mean, they know more about Hanaholi in that way, you know, they might apply their children, but perhaps there's another way that that could support spreading our knowledge about our school in another direction.
Speaker: Part of the, what works about Hanaholi and what makes it unique is that we are a small school and you really can know everybody when you're a small school.
Speaker: And that's one of the things that makes
Speaker: it's special in our, in our progressive mission, but also a part of our mission is that we reach out to the broader community and, um,
Speaker: We've had a summer school program called the skills we need for the last couple of years, and that may possibly expand or at least be continuous that, you know, we have children from the public schools come here.
Speaker: funding that's provided that summer experience for them, but really to have a greater impact, you know, in the state school system, our professional development center, which Amber Strong-Macayau has been involved with, along with Veronica Kimme, that has been a way that we've been able to expand our reach and expand our knowledge and our
Speaker: You know, care for the schools in Hawaii, and we've had many participants from the Department of Education in that way.
Speaker: Hana Haoli, as well as being an example of progressive pedagogy, also has a field pioneering professional development network.
Speaker: Run by Amber, Hana Haoli's PD both teaches and practices the ideas and philosophies that sets Hana Haoli apart.
Speaker: what kind of professional development do you do at Hana Haoli?
Speaker: And in particular, how does it differ from sort of the typical model of education professional development, both in terms of the content and the structure?
Speaker: Yeah, so Hana Haoli School has a professional development center, which has a director, which is myself.
Speaker: And uniquely, it's a bridge, bridge program between the University of Hawaii and Hana Haoli School.
Speaker: And I'd say that it's really modeled after what John Dewey was doing with the experimental school at the University of Chicago and which John Goodlad wrote about many years later, but really looking at school university partnerships and looking at how this helps schools become better because you have the influx of new ideas and new teachers and research and scholarship and pushing innovation.
Speaker: And then it supports the work of universities because it's real life living schools that students can learn how to teach in, scholars can come and study and researchers can come and do work in.
Speaker: And so our professional development center,
Speaker: At Hannah Holy has multiple types of programs we run workshops and public talks, we have a two week summer Institute and integrated interdisciplinary thematic curriculum design and.
Speaker: The main goal of all of these is to offer educative experiences that are led by progressive education teachers that align to our progressive education mission.
Speaker: We have programs such as that, but we also really use the school as a living laboratory.
Speaker: So we have school tours designed for educators, long term scholars and residents, shorter term scholars and residents where people can come and see
Speaker: things that they're exploring and thinking about in education in action.
Speaker: So for example, if they're interested in team teaching or what a multi-age classroom looks like, that instead of just reading about it in a book or taking a workshop on it, you can come and experience it for yourself alongside the teachers and students at Hana'oli.
Speaker: In addition, we have teacher candidates.
Speaker: So folks who are learning how to teach are on campus and
Speaker: By having that experience to experience progressive education firsthand as a first year novice teacher, it really fundamentally shapes the type of teachers folks become.
Speaker: And then we're also producing resources and materials and curriculum by working with all of the teachers that collaborate with us in either long term scholars or through workshops and things like that.
Speaker: I just want to emphasize the way in which we leverage being able to have learning happen alongside children and families and teachers as a part of the regular school day and the ways in which that grows the profession of teaching and helps to grow folks that have real hands-on experience with progressive education.
Speaker: And it also helps Hanauoli grow and become a better school itself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so how, I mean, how important, but also what role do you view professional development as part of the sort of larger identity and project of the Hannah Howell-E school?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I think it's really aligned nicely with our progressive mission of, um, supporting school communities to create a better future society for today's children.
Speaker: Um, I think that by,
Speaker: we are able to service the 210 plus families whose children attend the school, but by extension, the school is able to do work in the broader community and to have a bigger reach and a bigger impact.
Speaker: And I just think that that's so closely aligned to what it means to be a progressive educator.
Speaker: And that when you're a progressive teacher, you're thinking about
Speaker: the kids in your classroom, but you're also thinking about how can we apply the work that we're doing in our classroom to actually make real change in the world and society at large.
Speaker: And I think by having a professional development arm of the school, this really enables Hanaholi to fulfill its progressive mission in exponential ways.
Speaker: So we identified a couple of core values.
Speaker: Um, just as a reminder, we had learning by doing traditions and responding to a changing world, uh, learning at school mirrors, the real world learning, um, Ohana connection to community building and cultural responsiveness.
Speaker: How do you see those values, um, reflected in the, you know, the, the way you engage in professional development?
Speaker: Well, I would definitely say learning by doing was at the top of your list.
Speaker: And I, I mean, I think I've, I've said this, but I really think that that's,
Speaker: It's great to be able to have scholarship and research that you can read.
Speaker: It's great to work with an expert teacher in a professional development setting where you're thinking along with other professionals, but it just takes it another step further when you're able to go and see it in a real classroom or as a scholar in residence to have the opportunity to experiment with an idea that you're testing out
Speaker: in a real classroom or school setting.
Speaker: And I'll give an example.
Speaker: Last year, we had a student in our master's program in progressive philosophy and pedagogy.
Speaker: His name is Brendan McCarthy, and he was really interested in exploring how we could use film and students producing films to learn more about what children love and how can we use knowing about what they love to then
Speaker: create future programming at our school.
Speaker: So as a part of his master's program, Brendan facilitated a school-wide, I want to know what love is film festival at Hanaoli school.
Speaker: So each, all 210 students made films about what they love to do.
Speaker: They started out with a nine 19 second film and they got to show it to their peers and they,
Speaker: gave a critique and then they produced another film.
Speaker: And at the end of the year, we had a film festival with the whole school.
Speaker: And then we were able to analyze and look at what the students had made their films about and to help to use that to help us with future programming at the school.
Speaker: And that's just a great example of, you know,
Speaker: Brendan could have been at the university taking a class about progressive education, written a paper about how great would it be to have this film festival with children to explore what they love to do.
Speaker: But he also got to actually go and make it happen.
Speaker: And to be able to spend an extended period of time working on that, I think that's something teachers don't always have the opportunity.
Speaker: Our professional development experiences are typically short.
Speaker: and in chunks and to be able to have projects that you can work on over time within real school settings is just, I mean, that's learning by doing to its core.
Speaker: What sort of audience do you find, you know, engages in your professional development?
Speaker: Is it, you know, usually educators who want to try something new or educators who are already sort of, you know, immersed in the world of progressive pedagogy or have a background in it?
Speaker: Yeah, I'd say both.
Speaker: I, I think, um,
Speaker: We have folks that have an understanding of what it means to be a progressive educator, and they're looking for professional development opportunities that are going to help them further that aspect of who they are as an educator.
Speaker: So for example, we had a DOE, Hawaii State Department of Education elementary teacher last year, who really wanted to see for herself and to think more with teachers and students at Hana Haoli about how play
Speaker: can be integrated into learning in the early years.
Speaker: And so this was something that she had already identified for herself that she valued, and she sought us out to help her work on that.
Speaker: I also think that because so many of our workshops are responding to our changing world, and they focus on topics that teachers who may not identify as progressive
Speaker: recognize, man, I really want to go and learn something more about how to teach about climate justice or how to integrate more social emotional learning opportunities in my classroom.
Speaker: Or what does it mean to be a social justice educator?
Speaker: I've heard a lot about this.
Speaker: So they come to us not really with any background in progressive education.
Speaker: and really fall in love with the community and the community of learners and the support and the thinking and looking at teaching as an art.
Speaker: And so I think in that way, we invite and bring in new folks who maybe had little understanding of what progressive education is and open the doors to what the possibility that might be.
Speaker: And really the whole aim, right, is that they can come and experience things at Hanaoli
Speaker: see the possibilities and then go make this happen in their own classrooms.
Speaker: And some schools are progressive from the top down.
Speaker: They have progressive leadership or they have structures and systems that allow them to be progressive.
Speaker: But a lot of times, progressive movements can happen from the bottom up, one teacher at a time that says, I want to start doing integrated interdisciplinary thematic units of study and
Speaker: I learned about it, now I'm gonna bring in my colleagues and we're gonna grow this from the bottom up.
Speaker: And so in your professional development, how do you prepare educators for work in the progressive sphere?
Speaker: But I think more importantly, outside of the progressive sphere and sort of combining two questions that I have, what sort of skills and, and, uh, recommendations do you provide for educators who want to introduce progressive ideas in contexts that are maybe more resistant to those ideas?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: To answer the second part of your question about how do you support folks that find themselves in more traditional school settings?
Speaker: I think the first part is that when they attend a workshop or come to Hanaholi School and they see something that they believe philosophically about how school should be organized or how teaching should be, but they don't see it at their own school or they're not surrounded by people that have similar philosophies or beliefs,
Speaker: That in itself is validating to know that this is now proven by science and effective way of teaching and people are doing it and it's successful.
Speaker: So I think that's validating.
Speaker: And then we do the best that we can to really all of our professional learning experiences are grounded in community.
Speaker: and they're collaborative and we're socially constructing knowledge.
Speaker: So that involves talking and thinking with other people.
Speaker: And so they begin to build a network of peers and like-minded peers that even though they're not at the same school, they can connect with one another beyond the workshop and do the work together.
Speaker: And then we also try to set up structurally as a part of many of our learning experiences that folks have support over time.
Speaker: So for example, with the thematic institute that we do in the summer, they design curriculum for a two week period in the summer and then they start implementing in their classroom and schools in the fall.
Speaker: And we meet with them periodically in our community of learners and check in and say, how are things going?
Speaker: What sort of support that do you need?
Speaker: So I think being able to give ongoing support and then knowing just that we are a resource in the community that they can always come back to.
Speaker: I think is one way in which we ensure the longevity of the practice and that people can regularly have contact to help them keep growing and the support they need to make the movement grow in their own schools.
Speaker: In the end, what makes all of this worthwhile is the students being able to explore their interests in a safe and supportive environment.
Speaker: What struck me was just how joyous and lively the students were when discussing their time at Hana Haoli.
Speaker: They were often talking over each other in our interviews, each trying to get a word in about their favorite projects, traditions, you name it.
Speaker: They clearly love what they do.
Speaker: The faculty I spoke to as well had nothing but love for their jobs and responsibilities.
Speaker: My favorite parts are...
Speaker: Like I said, I think the validation that people get that they have this little voice inside of them about what they know is good for children and good for kids and good for themselves as a teacher and good for society.
Speaker: And yet they're not seeing that or they're not able to express that in the schools that they're at or in the professional communities that they're working in.
Speaker: And to have them come to our workshops or spend time on campus, it's almost like you can see a relief wash over them that this is truly a possibility and that this is a reality.
Speaker: It's not just something that philosophers are writing about in books, but it can really happen.
Speaker: It's almost like Christmas morning that just to see that in somebody's face
Speaker: when they realize that this reality is possible and then it fuels them to wanna go and make that reality where they are, I think that's so rewarding.
Speaker: And it's part of why I do what I do, what I'm driven by, that more and more children and communities have access to a more humane education like this.
Speaker: And so in any way possible that I can to fan the flame and make that happen in other schools, I think it's really rewarding.
Speaker: What is the hardest part?
Speaker: What was the most challenging, I think, was the second part of your question?
Speaker: Well, honestly, right now, what I'm really working on is setting up institutional structures to ensure that this partnership between the University of Hawaii and Hana Haoli School endures over time.
Speaker: And that just like Hana Haoli can serve as an inspiration for teachers to see how progressive teaching and learning looks like,
Speaker: that the Hanna-Hou'oli University Partnership can be an inspiration for other schools and universities to see what a successful school-university partnership can look like.
Speaker: I mean, this was John Dewey's dream from day one.
Speaker: I mean, this is what he was aiming to do at the experimental school at the University of Chicago.
Speaker: And it's just extremely difficult to have large institutions partner with each other and work in tandem with one another over time.
Speaker: And John Goodlad has wrote about this extensively as well.
Speaker: I mean, I was a part of a partnership school in the Department of Education where I got my master's and unfortunately that no longer exists.
Speaker: So I'm just determined to crack the nut of why is this so challenging to have school university partnerships when it makes so much sense for not only the profession of teaching, but
Speaker: for a better future society.
Speaker: And so I think that's one of my biggest challenges right now that I'm working on setting up institutional structures so that this becomes a model for other universities and schools.
Speaker: There's a few things that I like the most about my job.
Speaker: So I might not have a singular answer.
Speaker: One is that I get to see the whole school.
Speaker: I'm not siloed, so to speak, in one classroom and needing to make sure that my
Speaker: Our group of children is cared for all day long.
Speaker: I can sort of have a wider view of the day and visit classrooms, see what's going on so that I'll know what to share with families, but also so that I can help with enrollment and any questions families may have along the way.
Speaker: So I love having the wider range and the freedom to see every aspect of
Speaker: of the school.
Speaker: And I also love talking with parents about our school.
Speaker: I love relating to different families.
Speaker: I just really enjoy that a lot.
Speaker: And what do I like least?
Speaker: Maybe that I'm impatient and want to have, make a lot of changes all at once that I need to be more patient to wait for those changes to come.
Speaker: That's the hardest part for me.
Speaker: Like I want to make changes
Speaker: And I know it's going to be several years.
Speaker: So I need to like hold off and go more slowly, slow down and be okay with that.
Speaker: But it's a really exciting place to work.
Speaker: When you start a new job, you have that imposter syndrome and that lasted for a little while.
Speaker: And then I realized, no, no, I love this school.
Speaker: I know about the school I can share with families and learn along the way, just like our students are.
Speaker: You know, so I actually moved around quite a bit, too, when I was young.
Speaker: And I did have I did attend very traditional schools.
Speaker: And I would say, I mean, the way that I know that she will build she's a part of a community that she will be a part of for a very long time, if not forever.
Speaker: you know, for the rest of her life, really, I can feel already that this community is going to be a part of her life forever.
Speaker: I think that that's really different from what I grew up with, you know, because I moved around a bunch and because I transitioned from, you know, my elementary school to my middle school to my high school here at Hanaha'oli, it feels like it's a, even though it's only eight years that they spend here, it feels like a really significant part of a kid's life, you know.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think so.
Speaker: I would say the major difference is that, you know, she's going to be a part of this community for a really long time and she really feels a sense of belonging to this community.
Speaker: You know, when I talk to her about like she's attending summer school at another school, just a bigger school to, you know, so that hopefully she'll.
Speaker: have an easy time adapting to new situations because this place is so nurturing and it's so consistent in her life.
Speaker: When I talk to her about, you know, eventually when you're in middle school, you'll go to another school like this one.
Speaker: Maybe you'll go to the school that your sisters go to.
Speaker: And she says, no, I never want to go to another school.
Speaker: I love Hana Haoli so much, you know, and I can see how safe she feels here and how much she feels like herself, you know, and she can't imagine being anywhere else.
Speaker: Like, a lot of kids say, like, oh, school's so boring.
Speaker: I don't like homework.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But Hana Haoli makes me feel, I don't know how exactly to say it, but, like, it makes me feel like, oh, yes, I get to go to school.
Speaker: I want to go to school.
Speaker: And for me, I actually love homework.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: I'm kind of the opposite.
Speaker: And then, like, Hana Haoli has taught me to love homework.
Speaker: I like homework, but not if I have a lot after school.
Speaker: Like today, I have a lot after school.
Speaker: So luckily it's a Friday and there's no homework.
Speaker: But I just, I like homework otherwise.
Speaker: So what's your one word that you would use to describe?
Speaker: And then we got to go.
Speaker: Joyous and fun.
Speaker: I'll say, yeah, joyous and fun.
Speaker: My favorite part is probably recess because we let
Speaker: we get to let all our energy out before we start again and learn.
Speaker: My favorite is the specialists.
Speaker: We have music, Mandarin, PE because unlike the other classes, they're a little different.
Speaker: And it's like going into another world where you could each
Speaker: do something fun.
Speaker: It's like escaping from all the hard work.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think they're like recess because sometimes there are friends that you want to play with but you can't because they're in like different cohorts.
Speaker: So like during recess you're able to like talk to them or spend time with them.
Speaker: Learning by doing.
Speaker: What our school means is joyous work.
Speaker: Oli means joyous and Hana means work.
Speaker: No other way.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And because in Hawaiian it's backwards, so our school means joyous work, Hanaoli.
Speaker: And a couple, like five, six years ago, I think it was, we celebrated the 100th year of school, and that was Ho'omao Hanaoli, or the 100th year of, one century of Hanaoli.
Speaker: And then, yeah, like,
Speaker: I also don't like to be pushed, so I think it's like the teachers, I guess, would need to challenge the kids a bit, but not like, come on, do this, this, this, this.
Speaker: But letting them go at their pace, but still pushing them a bit to challenge them, get their minds growing.
Speaker: I also like the creativity of the school, where like all of our traditions and the creativity.
Speaker: And one of my favorite classes, I want to say it's art, because I love art.
Speaker: I like to draw like faces or self-portraits.
Speaker: And right now we're making our kapha for Makiki.
Speaker: And I think that's really cool.
Speaker: I think progressive education is like moving on, like you keep going forward.
Speaker: and never stop and like keep being outstanding.
Speaker: To me, it means to go forward but also, my parents tell me this, but it's okay to look back on mistakes that you made so you can keep going forward in the future.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think progressive education to me is kind of like, yeah, like at Hanukoli, learning by doing and knowing what you're supposed to do and why.
Speaker: Do you guys remember that in your school unit when you learned about like traditional schools and then progressive education is the type of school at Hanukoli?
Speaker: So knowing that that's what that word means, do you two want to elaborate on what you believe this type of education is about?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: having a choice and like being independent.
Speaker: I can be who I want in the future.
Speaker: It's like building and molding yourself with all the education you did so you can be who you are.
Speaker: Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project.
Speaker: I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change.
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Speaker: Thank you.
