At a Friday assembly in December, Hanahau‘oli School children were enthusiastically introduced to a brand new Joy of Art experience that would take place in January 2025. The children’s excitement was felt throughout the day as they talked with one another at recess and at lunch, sharing their reactions to the new learning opportunities presented and articulating their preferences of which Joy of Art experience they were most interested in with their friends. That night, children went home and continued to talk with their parents and caregivers about the two days of choice-driven learning they would get to participate in at the start of the new year.

To kick off the start of the new year and semester, I had the opportunity to participate on a speaker panel at the Hawaii Education Association’s annual summit held on Wednesday, January 8, 2025, 9:30 am – 130 pm at the downtown YWCA. The Hawaii Education Association (HEA) chose to focus this year’s educator summit on topics critical to the current moment: teacher recruitment and retention.

Resilience is a topic we hear a lot about these days, and we all have a general understanding of what it is - but how do we teach it to young people? We intuitively know how significant resilience is when it comes to overall well-being and success in life – but the skills that make up resilience aren’t always obvious. The good news is that resilience can be learned and can be influenced by both internal and external factors that, as teachers, we do have some control over.