By Ger Thao

In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer (2017) writes, 

If we want to grow as teachers -- we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other about our inner lives -- risky stuff in a profession that fears the personal and seeks safety in the technical, the distant, the abstract (p. 48).

For many years, social justice educators have taken this to heart in the work that we do in classrooms, schools, and in the wide array of professional development we lead. We have come to know deeply how the personal and professional collide when it comes to social justice in education, and to grow the courage for this work in our students, we have come to depend on the creation of intellectually safe (Jackson, 2001) classrooms and professional communities of inquiry. But what happens when we ask teacher leaders to disclose their inner lives, take personal and professional risks, and become vulnerable in what is often a hostile, volatile, and mostly unsafe public space? This is the work that is required of leaders of social justice in education, and it is why ongoing support and initiatives, such as The Social Justice Education in Hawai‘i Project, are needed to confront obstacles that have oftentimes kept us separate and silent.

The Social Justice Education in Hawai‘i Project was originally launched in the 2018-19 school year in collaboration with the nationally renowned Learning for Justice program. Its purpose is to advance social justice education in the state of Hawai‘i and beyond. Today, the Hanahauʻoli School Professional Development Center (PDC) and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa College of Education (UHM COE) carry on this project by continuing to offer programming, which will grow local educators’ capacity to inspire youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy. With the generosity and support of Jana and Howard Wolff, the project works to ensure that educators and school practitioners have access to high-quality professional development programs and resources needed for effectively carrying out social justice education in Hawai‘i. 

Project Leads, Dr. Amber Makaiau, Dr. Patricia Halagao, and Ger Thao (as the Graduate Assistant) introduced a new component of the overall project in 2022 – the Hawai‘i Social Justice (HSJ) Educator Award. Often, the work of teachers goes unnoticed, so the HSJ Educator Award aims to acknowledge and sustain local educators who are planning and doing exemplary social justice work in the State of Hawai‘i. This is a financial award program aimed to support and grow their work. The award funds Teacher/Classroom Level projects and School/System Level projects that culminate in measurable student outcomes and sustainable systems change. Applicants are selected based on community need, prior social justice work, and a clear plan for sustaining the work. Two $2,500 awards per school year are now being awarded for outstanding project proposals in the following school years: 2023-2024, 2024-2025, 2025-2026, and 2026-2027. More details of the HSJ Educator Award can be found here. 

For our first award year, we’d like to highlight two local inspiring educators for their outstanding project proposals and unwavering commitment to social justice education. The 2023-2024 HSJ Educator Award recipients are Jonathon Medeiros and Natalie Lalagos!

Jonathon Medeiros is a National Board-certified high school teacher who has been teaching and learning about Language Arts and rhetoric for 17 years with students on Kauaʻi, where he was born and raised on a farm near Makaleha. He and his students learn about curiosity, community, and place. They build deeper connections to each other and the places they live by being curious about where they live, the stories of those places, and then following those curiosities. Jonathon is the former director of the Kauaʻi Teacher Fellowship, a poet, essayist, and also writes frequently about education, equity, and the power of curiosity. He believes that curiosity kills boredom and that if you change all of your mistakes or regrets, you’d erase yourself. He walks, paddles, surfs, and builds and enjoys spending time with his brilliant wife and daughters.

With this award, Jonathon plans to connect Future Teachers of Hawaiʻi club members to students and other experts across the state. Club members plan to visit with practitioners on other islands, in elementary and secondary schools, to learn from them about how to weave student advocacy and social justice into the fabric of a classroom and school. Students will learn from higher education professionals on their campuses and in their classrooms, both about best practices for future teachers but also about how the universities are taking on the issues of social justice and equity. Members also hope to learn from cultural practitioners, which will teach them about the importance of place and how social justice is key to the future of Hawaiʻi Nei. The students will take what they learn on these visits and create workshops or presentations to share their learning with teachers and students here on Kauaʻi. They will also write and publish about their journey along the way.

Our next recipient is no stranger to the Social Justice in Education Project. Natalie Lalagos was one of the twenty-four participants in the Leaders of Social Justice in Education: Theory to Practice course in the spring of 2020 where her social justice work blossomed. She is a National Board Certified Spanish teacher at Kealakehe High School who is always looking for opportunities to celebrate multilingualism. She has worked in public education for the last eleven years. She is a Hawai‘i State Teacher Fellow (2022-2024) and received the Hawai‘i Association of Language Teachers Award for Teaching Excellence in 2022. With her passion about globalizing her classroom and practice and being involved in her community, she currently supports new teachers and runs the Seal of Biliteracy program at her school. Off campus you can find Natalie on her SUP or rehearsing improv at the Aloha Theatre.

With this award, Natalie hopes to continue to fund the Transformative Translation program, which seeks to elevate the power of multilingualism and make our community more linguistically inclusive by educating, training, and giving high school students in West Hawai‘i work experience in the field of translation. Students at Kealakehe and Konawaena High Schools who speak many languages take linguistics and translation classes with Professor Scott Saft at University of Hawai‘i, Hilo. They receive dual high school and college credit for free while working on increasingly difficult translation projects with materials from our community. This year they have also launched a paid internship component of the program where students apply, interview, and receive coaching in their professional and translation skills while translating materials for our community. This award will help to pay student translators.

Social justice work can often feel isolating and challenging. Passionate determination and moral courage (Shield, 2013) are needed for activism or critical action against injustices to ensure equal opportunity, high-quality education, and civil civic participation. Social justice teacher leaders like Jonathon and Natalie possess these qualities and inspire us to come together, work together, and support each other in building a brighter, safer, and more just future for our keiki and our community. We are so excited to support the brave work that our two recipients are doing. Stay tuned for a follow-up with Jonathon and Natalie next February 2024, when they will share videos showcasing the outcomes of their projects. 

Works Cited:

Jackson, T. (2001). The art and craft of “gently socratic” inquiry. In A. Costa (Ed.), Developing minds: A resource book for teaching thinking (3rd Ed). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Palmer, P. (2017). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. In The courage to teach. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated.

Shields, C. (2013). Transformative leadership in education: Equitable change in an uncertain and complex world (pp. 1–148). Eye on Education.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ger Thao, Ph.D. is a doctoral student and lecturer in the Curriculum Studies Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa College of Education and serves as the Graduate Assistant for the Social Justice Education in Hawai‘i Project. She holds a MA in Education: Curriculum & Instruction, BA in Liberal Studies, and Multiple Subject teaching credential from CSU, Chico. She was a former elementary teacher/ELA Intervention Specialist in northern CA for eight years and a Hmong American author of a bilingual children’s book titled “The Hmong Journey: Hmoob Txoj Kev Taug” and co-editor of “Hmong Teacher Experiences: Voices from the Field.” Her passion is working with educators to support schools in developing and implementing literature, curriculum, and professional developments that reflect diverse populations, including multicultural, indigenous, Asian and Pacific-Island perspectives. She enjoys being an auntie to her 20 total nieces and nephews.