'Mighty Mo' gets wider role as DOE classroom

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

Teachers from seven schools are heading to a classroom of a different sort today — the battleship USS Missouri at Pearl Harbor.

The Department of Education has joined with the USS Missouri Memorial Association for a series of five on-board workshops that will be incorporated into history and social studies lessons.

Thirteen teachers from Moanalua, McKinley, Wai'anae, Campbell and Pearl City high schools, as well as 'Aiea Intermediate School and Ke Kula Kaiapuni'o Anuenue immersion school, are taking part in the workshops scheduled through May.

Mary Anne Soboleski, an educational specialist in social studies, said the association offered a partnership, and the DOE agreed that it would be worthwhile.

Soboleski said the teachers will learn the ins and outs of the battleship — the site of Japan's surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay — and make it part of the "teaching with historic places" program.

"It's a strategy," Soboleski said. "We actually have units on the USS Arizona — teaching with the Arizona — so part of this is making social studies teachers aware that the classroom is not the only place where kids can learn history."

The "Mighty Mo," which served in three wars over five decades and now functions as a dockside museum, will be part of a bigger history lesson.

"If the course is modern (history in Hawai'i), teachers could say the Missouri is where the surrender was signed," Soboleski said. "What happened in Hawai'i politically, socially (afterward)?"

Jackie Kemp, education manager for the Missouri, said the workshops will be held in the ship's old chapel.

"We're trying to work to create a more comprehensive (school) unit on the Missouri," Kemp said, "so children can come away with more of an understanding of what the Missouri is and her contributions to U.S. history."