Posted on: Sunday, May 27, 2001
Graduates grew up with Hawaiian
By Alice Keesing
Advertiser Education Writer
Today, Maui King Kekaulike senior Le'ahi Hall will receive from her parents a feather lei that she painstakingly stitched together during her last year at school.
Her teacher will drape around her shoulders a 6-foot tapa cloth that she pounded with wooden mallets until her shoulders ached. And she will join five other seniors in becoming the first graduating class from the school's Hawaiian immersion program.
"It will be a relief in a way after all that hard work, but there will be such sadness to be leaving," Hall said.
Hall is one of a new cadre of students who are growing up speaking Hawaiian, learning in Hawaiian and being Hawaiian. She began at an 'Aha Punana Leo preschool and moved up through the public schools' Hawaiian immersion program from Pa'ia Elementary to Kalama Intermediate to King Kekaulike.
Next she goes to Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.
Educators point to Hall to dispel concerns that students in the Hawaiian immersion program won't be able to make the transition into a monolingual world.
"Just the fact that LŽ'ahi is going to Stanford should say everything," said Pulama Collier, the head teacher for Kekaulike's immersion program. "The education that she's had is no less and sometimes is greater. Of course, that is not the route that all of our students will choose."
The Department of Education started immersion programs at two schools in 1987. There now are 17 immersion programs, educating about 1,600 students. Twenty-three students will graduate in the next week from Kekaulike on Maui, Nawahiokalani'opu'u on the Big Island and 'žnuenue on O'ahu.
Puanani Wilhelm, who heads up the program, said it still has its share of growing pains, and misconceptions persist.
"I think people think this a language program and that all we care about is that we teach kids to speak Hawaiian," she said.
In general, students in the immersion programs speak only in Hawaiian until fifth grade, when English is introduced. The core of the program is Hawaiian culture and values, but students cover the same subjects as their regular education peers.
At Kekaulike, Hall spent half her day in English program classes with the rest of the school learning subjects such as science and math, and the other half in immersion classes, which are conducted entirely in Hawaiian. At other campuses, however, even math and science are taught in Hawaiian.
Making that possible has been the work of a lexology committee that has been busy for years creating new words in Hawaiian to parallel new words in English. For example, Hawaiian speakers can now talk about microbiology, or kalaimeaolahune.
While immersion school students are testing the same on the Stanford Achievement Test as their regular education peers by the eighth grade, Wilhelm said there is still more work to do to strengthen the program.
Today on Maui, they will recognize the work of the last 13-plus years to produce their first graduating class.
"This is a real accomplishment for all of us on Maui," Collier said. "Such effort has been put in by all people, the parents and the students themselves."
In keeping with the program's goals, the students have played a major role in planning the unique ceremony.
"They are the ceremony," Collier said.
Instead of sitting in chairs listening to graduation speakers, the five graduates will show what they have learned through chants, hula and speeches. And instead of a scroll of paper, they will receive the feather lei and tapa cloth that they themselves learned to make.
"I just know the tears will be flowing," Hall said.
