Supporting Hawai‘i’s Teachers

Over the past few years, the Hawai’i State Department of Education began implementing new social studies standards—called the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework—that require inquiry-based teaching practices and use place-based resources. For the many teachers who are not originally from Hawai’i, but who teach Hawaiian students —both those who have grown up in the state and those of Native Hawaiian ancestry—this posed some difficulty. In addition to needing opportunities to educate themselves about Hawai‘i’s history and culture, teachers needed primary resources to help them incorporate what they learned into the classroom. In response to this need, the Mānoa Heritage Center leveraged an NEH grant to create a program that helps ground local teachers in place-based learning and integrate Native Hawaiian cultural resources into their classrooms.

Video courtesy of the Mānoa Heritage Center.

Over three years, the Mānoa Heritage Center is hosting an annual professional development workshop that brings teachers from across the state together to learn and collaborate. In addition to attending workshops led by experts in Hawaiian culture, teachers learn to use the C3 Framework to create inquiries that deepen students’ content knowledge, using the Mānoa Heritage Center as a case study in how to teach a range of subjects through a visit to an historically- and culturally-significant place. As the site of botanical gardens, an ancient Hawaiian temple, and a historic residence (not yet open to the public), the Mānoa Heritage Center is an ideal site to explore place-based learning.

Many teachers come to the program because they are looking for Hawai‘i-specific classroom resources, as well as to learn how to create place-based inquiries. Awaiaulu, an organization dedicated to advancing Hawaiian language and a partner on the project, is making translations of pertinent Hawaiian language newspaper articles available to teachers. These rich primary resources grounded in local culture and history can be used to integrate Hawaiian history across the curriculum. The demand for the program demonstrates that teachers are eager for these resources: each year, the program enrollment has filled and there is an ongoing waitlist to participate in it. And in addition to coming from across the islands, teachers come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds: what’s taught in this program is used in courses from science, to history, to literature and language.