By Douglas Hiu
Ma ka hana ka ‘ike.
By doing one learns.
My middle school experience was a lousy one. I attended a combination of four different schools in three years. My attendance was sporadic, and when I was at school, I was primarily focused on being accepted by my peers, not anything academic. I constantly wondered what people thought of me and I craved their validation and approval. I also worried about life at home. I worried whether my family would be intact when I got there because homelife was a daily race for the bare essentials. At both home and school, I had very little support academically, socially, or emotionally. Life was a struggle. I was definitely in need of more aloha.
Mary Kawena Pukui (1986) begins to define aloha as love, affection, compassion, mercy, sympathy, pity, kindness, sentiment, and charity (p. 21). Located at the foundation of a Hawaiian world view, aloha has deep cultural and spiritual significance to Kānaka Maoli and is critical to Hawaiian Cultural Based Education (HCBE). Kū Kahakalau, a native Hawaiian educator, researcher, cultural practitioner, grassroots activist, song writer, and expert in Hawaiian language, history and culture refers to this as a Pedagogy of Aloha. A pedagogy of aloha, she explains, centers: (1) Hawaiian values and traditions as guidelines for instruction and interpersonal relations; (2) Hawaiian knowledge as foundation of curriculum; and (3) Hawaiian authentic, performance-based assessment as a model for evaluation (Kahakalau, 2022). I would have benefited from a pedagogy of aloha when I was in middle school. Instead, I felt lost.
These thoughts and feelings were not unique to me, explains Chris Balme, creator of Argonaut and former head of Millenium School. Middle School “is a time of incredibly rapid development for all young people, not only intellectually but also socially and emotionally; yet it is a time when so many lose their interest in learning” (Balme, 2022). With that, he adds that seventh grade minds are primed for discovering their authentic selves, for relating to the world around them, and for finding what their contributions to those things they relate to the most in life will be. To meet their needs and win their hearts, middle school educators must set up learning environments that are fun, relevant, authentic, and collaborative.
In my work now as a middle school social studies teacher at Kamehameha Schools Kapālama I am often inspired by Kahakalau and Balme’s work. I use their frameworks to support my endeavors as a teacher scientist, studying my practice. Dedicated to ensuring that my students do not experience middle school as I did, I ask: How can I create a safe space for middle school students to discover their strengths, explore their identity, and find ways to contribute to the world? How can I make learning relevant for the Hawaiian learners I serve? How can I make learning fun and authentic? What might a middle school social studies classroom like this look like? What is my pedagogy of aloha? In my ongoing quest to find the answers to these questions, I open up my classroom to you.
A Community of Inquiry
The learning environment in my classroom looks and feels much different from the one I experienced in middle school. It is intellectually safe. Within my classroom there are “no put-downs and no comments intended to belittle, undermine, negate, devalue, or ridicule. Within this place, the group accepts virtually any question or comment, so long as it is respectful of the other members of the circle” (Jackson, 2001, 460). This culture of learning–where students do not have to fear making mistakes–did not happen overnight. In fact, creating a learning environment where students were not afraid of being criticized for their thoughts, feelings, and opinions or where they felt judged by their teacher or by their peers was a long learning process for me as an educator. In my classroom we work to remind each other that making mistakes provides opportunities to learn and grow. I emphasize that feedback is given with aloha. I also explain how feedback is a part of that growth process and that the feedback does not come only from the teacher but just as importantly, and even more powerfully, that feedback comes from peers. Over the years, I’ve found that when intellectual safety and a culture of aloha is established, inquiry flourishes.
Design Thinking
Design thinking is the vessel I use to help facilitate inquiry, student learning, growth, and creativity. Students collaborate together in groups and start with researching relevant issues within their communities over the course of the semester. Through this process, students freely dive into authentic and relevant community-based issues, by developing empathy for those issues through research and collaboration. They learn how to use a revolving non-linear cycle of brainstorming, research, prototypes, tests, observations, iterations and sharing of their ideas and solutions. This past year, the overarching inquiry question that emerged was, “How can I contribute to Moananuiākea and elevate my ʻohana, community, and lāhui?” The students worked collaboratively to engage in the inquiry: goal-setting, communicating, generating questions, and problem-solving together.
Applying a Pedagogy of Aloha to the Practice
One challenge I identified in my practice and wanted to overcome was: How do I assess student learning throughout the inquiry process and what student work counts as evidence and authentically captures learning and growth? To find my way with this question I turned to Kahakalau who tells us that Hawaiian Cultural Based Education (HCBE) must be rigorous, not remedial. She explains, relationships + relevancy + kuleana = academic rigor. “Kuleana is a uniquely Hawaiian value and practice which is loosely translated to mean responsibility." The word kuleana refers to a reciprocal relationship between the person who is responsible, and the thing which they are responsible for (Sala, 2015). This is why we begin each project journey with a question, something my students really wonder about and that matters to them. It is a question with kuleana. Kahakalau, in her pedagogy of aloha framework calls these types of questions, “long term goals.” Questions with kuleana allow students to perpetuate native language and cultural knowledge, recreate island sustainability, thrive in a global society, and be anything they want to be (Kahakalau 2022).
Other kuleana questions from projects in the past have included: How will I perpetuate Princess Bernice Pauahiʻs legacy? How will I fulfill my kuleana as a kanaka to elevate my lāhui (people/nation/race)? In 2019, when the Thirty Meter Telescope protest on Mauna Kea was the most relevant issue for my students, the question that emerged was: How will I contribute to the Mauna Kea movement? Students researched, brainstormed, ideated, analyzed, dialogued, and prototyped ideas as individuals and as group members to identify aspects of the Mauna Kea movement they wanted to focus on, side with, and contribute to. Students learned to constantly reflect before taking next steps in their project and were driven by their north star or their kuleana question. We also worked as a group to provide feedback and determine success criteria.
A Culture of Feedback
This inquiry and project-based style of learning allows me time to provide a powerful cycle of feedback–specific and actionable feedback for each individual and group throughout the process. As John Hattie describes, “effective feedback provides thinking, interpretation and improvement and the responsibility for giving, receiving, and acting on feedback… shared between students, peers, and teachers” (Hattie, 2020). As a class we agree and build out the success criteria for our projects at the beginning. This creates a guide, which the learners get to follow throughout the learning process, always reflecting back to the kuleana question, and the criteria built out for project success. Often our success criteria for each project is centered around the content we’ve identified as essential 21st century social studies standards and skills and Hawaiian knowledge. These include comparing and contrasting, explaining causes and effects, proposing solutions, identifying multiple perspectives, constructing arguments, identifying limitations arguments, understanding the main idea or message, providing supporting details, and analyzing how multiple skills, perspectives, and concepts can be looked at differently across cultures and regions.
Hoʻike
The hoʻike is a summative demonstration of knowledge and process at the end of the term. To prepare for the hoʻike, students have to submit a proposal, which includes a detailed plan for their presentation with goals, objectives, timelines, and an explanation of how their group will apply what they learned to make a contribution to the lāhui and broader community. The contribution part of the hoʻike is where students share their learning and growth with an authentic audience and show where they took action. It is place-based, performance-based, identity-driven, and demonstrates community-oriented learning and knowledge-building.
Here is one example of a hoʻike project that was recently presented by a group in my class. The issue of homelessness (or the unhoused) was identified as an important and relevant focus for each group member because they had all been touched personally in their lives in some way and helping the unhoused in the community was something they cared deeply about. At the hoʻike each individual in the group utilized a vivid array of visuals, statistics, and facts to share information about the unhoused and were able to connect with the audience through personal stories of how homelessness had touched them in their lives. In their final presentation they also provided an analysis of their data on the unhoused by comparing and contrasting possible causes and effects of homelessness. Group members proposed solutions and insight learned from their research. They also shared about some of the grassroots organizations that are on the ground pounding the pavement, helping to address homelessness in our communities. The group ultimately decided that they wanted to feature, highlight, and contribute to The Shelter in Kahaluʻu by donating fresh taro. Group members were able to meet outside of school, harvest, and pound the taro into paʻiʻai. They put the paʻiʻai into bags and were able to take roughly thirty pounds of fresh paʻiʻai to the shelter for families. They also were able to arrange and schedule a visit and tour of the facilities and conduct an interview with the program manager. The tour given by the manager gave the students an even greater perspective of how The Shelter operates, serves their community, and makes a positive impact with the people experiencing houselessness in our real world.
Reflection
Reflection is key throughout the learning process. One tool we use to reflect through this learning process is the Team Meeting Log (TML), which helps students achieve their goals and objectives. Individuals in each group use the TML to document and set academic and personal goals. They use color coded text so I can identify each individualʻs reflective contributions to the team document. The TML also allows students to coordinate, record, and reflect on their learning and progress toward the project’s success criteria. Students organize their entries by date and track their individual and group growth over time.
The TML is also used as a daily reflection at the end of class. Learners reflect on John Hattie’s four critical questions for effective feedback: “Where have I done well? Where can I improve? How do I improve? What do I do next time?” I constantly refer to these questions throughout my one-on-one conversations with groups and individuals because these questions help me as a teacher determine where I can provide simple and actionable feedback for students to more effectively meet their needs (Hattie, 2020).
Another structure I created to help provide a framework for reflection and growth throughout the learning process is called The Weekly Reflection Form (WRF). It’s a formative stop for students to reflect on their journey and for me to assess who’s making progress towards achieving their growth and goals and who’s not. These forms help me study my students’ growth and reflect upon where I can provide interventions and extensions for students to support their learning. Students, along with providing evidence of learning, generate new questions and wonderings. Through the use of the Good Thinker's Toolkit (Jackson, 2001), students develop thoughtful questions about their wonderings, considerations, or areas for growth. Students also provide products, conversations, and observations that demonstrate how they have met their goals. Students explain how they have grown personally, academically, and socially. The reflection and feedback that come back from students through the TML and WRF forms often are profound for me as a teacher in my reflection and growth.
Final Thoughts
Recently, I had the privilege of listening to a student of the great coach, mentor, and motivator John Wooden. This was at a professional development meeting, held by our athletics department at Kamehameha Schools Kapālama. The student is Cori Close, the transformational head basketball coach for the women’s team at UCLA. She shared about her life experiences and coaching philosophy.
Cori described how she creates a transformational culture within her women’s basketball program at UCLA. Referred to as “The Process”, she described a culture characterized by striving for excellence each and every day, challenging yourself to be a little better than you were the day before, and practicing “elite consistency.” Elite consistency, she explains, is doing fewer things in whatever program you are in, but doing them with precision and excellence. All of this resonated with me and the approach to teaching that I am building in my classroom with my students. I have a genuine desire to keep learning and to be better than I was the day before. This drive towards improvement has undoubtedly guided and sustained the unlikely path I have taken as an educator.
As I described at the beginning of this blog, my personal experience in grade school was turbulent, filled with failure, absent of many true and meaningful relationships, and void of aloha. I was not able to experience the nutriment and joy that comes from a stable homelife, sufficient resources, and a quality progressive education. I have had to “learn by doing” along the way, and it is the reason why I work incredibly hard to make sure the students I serve do not have the same experience I did. This is why my own professional kuleana question–my North Star in teaching–is: How can I be better each and every day for my students’ sake, for myself, and for my amazing family?
The opportunity to create a transformational experience for the communities and classrooms that we serve comes with an immense responsibility. Just like no student enters our classrooms wanting to fail, no teacher who serves in an educational setting wants to be ineffective. Over the years, I’ve learned that when I focus on researching and implementing progressive educational ideals and practices, collaborating with traditional and progressive educators alike, and developing meaningful and healthy relationships with my students and colleagues, I find myself on the pathway towards growth and healthy development as a professional educator. I’ve learned that finding fulfillment and effectiveness in our craft is not a perfect science. It is filled with failure, peaks and valleys, but as Cori says, if you embrace the process, especially on the days you do not feel like showing up, and you try to operate with a genuine authenticity in serving your students everyday, you will make a positive, and meaningful impact in your community. This is why studying middle school teaching and experimenting with a pedagogy of aloha is my kuleana.
Works Cited:
Balme, C., Johnson, N. (Host). (2022, March 8). Finding the Magic in Middle School. PrepTalks. PodBean Podcasting. https://www.easybib.com/guides/citation-guides/apa-format/how-to-cite-a-podcast-apa/
Hattie, J. (2020, December 1). Building A Feedback Culture: Making Learning Visible [Slides]. Grokspot & NextLesson. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rr2oBceIUescSLYUVEd1F696bBFtCM44RWOJpfj5j08/edit#slide=id.g39d11fc8d_030
Jackson, T. (2022). Primal Wonder: Exploring Where Philosophy Begins And Should Not End With Dr. Thomas Jackson. (2021, November 7). Hanahauoli.Org. Retrieved June 28, 2022, from https://www.hanahauoli.org/pdc-blogposts/2021/13
Kahakalau, K. (2018). Ku Kahakalau and Pedagogy of Aloha (ep.1). The Ecoversities Alliance. Retrieved June 28, 2022, from https://ecoversities.org/podcast/podcast-episode-1/#:~:text=Ku%20shares%20more%20with%20us,determination%20in%20education%20and%20beyond.
Pukui, M. K., & Elbert, S. H. (1986). Hawaiian dictionary: Hawaiian-English, English-Hawaiian. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Sala, M. (2015, April 17). Hawaiian Word of The Day: Kuleana. Hawaii News Now. Retrieved June 28, 2022, from https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/28832829/hawaiian-word-of-the-day-kuleana/#:~:text=The%20Hawaiian%20Word%20of%20the,which%20they%20are%20responsible%20for.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Douglas Hiu is a middle school social studies teacher at Kamehameha Schools Kapālama. He is also the boys and girls middle school wrestling coach. He has recently completed two years within the Ke Ala Ula Learning and Innovations cohort and has continued that work by innovating, testing, and diving into the design thinking process to create a collaborative, intellectually safe, student centered, and engaging learning environment for native Hawaiian learners. He also enjoys experimenting and iterating with the framework and theories of other great innovative educators and professionals. Doug was born and raised on the east side of O‘ahu and is an alumnus of Kahuku High School. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in Sociology. He went on to receive his masters degree in secondary education (MEd) at the University of Phoenix. Within that time he spent much of his early career working in the public school system with special needs children and as a middle school social studies teacher for eight years.
