HAWAIIAN STYLE
At charter school, Hawaiian values enhance learning

By Wade Kilohana Shirkey
Advertiser Staff Writer

Haku: to compose, put in order, arrange; to braid or plait.

Hakipu'u: a state charter school where students pick at the fabric of things Hawaiian — 'aina, 'olelo and culture; fishpond, stream and lo'i — until they have enough to weave their final garment of graduation.

What other students get from the classroom and apply to the outside world, these students take from what's intrinsically Hawaiian around them — and make that their classroom.

Resource teacher Me'ala "Auntie 'Ala" Bishop, 50, remembers a much different educational past, when teachers couldn't handle even as much "Hawaiianness" as her name. Me'alaaloha, "the essence of love," became "Carol."

She claims her heritage not by percentage of blood — "one-eighth short of a half," she jokes — but by the heart. "Hawaiian is not a color," she said. "It's an attitude."

The Kane'ohe school opened just three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. "The first thing we had to do was this big ho'oponopono and honor all these people (lost in the attacks)," she said. The practice was cultural. It was protocol. It was pono.

Hakipu'u Learning Center is a student project-based school, said Bishop. Ma Ka Hana Ka 'Ike (learning is in the doing) is their mantra. "We teach all the usual subjects, but through a Hawaiian mindset and values system. It's not just (a curriculum) of culture, but (in) living it," Bishop said.

You're as likely to hear melodic Hawaiian as English flowing off their tongues, as easily as the waters off nearby Windward mountains. "We want the keiki as ma'a in one as the other," Bishop said.

The school has about 60 haumana, or students, Grades 7 to 10, a large percentage of them part-Hawaiian.

Kumu are called auntie and uncle, and each class of eight to 12 students is considered an 'ohana.

Their posted wall schedule reads a bit different than most: 8 a.m., ho'omakaukau (make ready); 10:45 a.m. ho'oma'a (drills; review); and 2 p.m., pau ke kula. "All the kids like that one," Bishop joked, because it means school's out.

Among the usual classroom accouterments of world globes, blackboards and desks are a few things more intrinsic to a Hawaiian education: a poi pounding board on the floor; a kua for pounding kapa; lauhala mats for sitting; and a door sign: "KAPU. NOT FOR STUDENT USE."

Nearby is a state-of-the-art sound system. There is a Macintosh computer on almost every desk. "The kids S0 connect," Bishop said. "Major tech!" This is education for a modern Hawai'i.

Instruction would seem reversed by the Western mindset: Hawaiian helps to discern different English structure; Hawaiian values of kokua (help), laulima (cooperation) and lokahi (unity), and cultural diversity are social studies come alive. The Hawaiian concepts of ahupua'a, lo'i, loko'ia (fishponds) and stream restoration — Bishop's kuleana — speak to scientific inquiry, environmental study, economics, geography and self-sustainability. Nothing new, even to the old Hawaiians.

The school encourages the students to "practice what they preach" and 'ai pono, eat appropriately, enjoying a diet of 'uala (sweet potato), mai'a (banana), poi, natural vegetables and fish.

"We don't just sit in the classroom and talk biology, biodegradables ... we go to the fishpond and pull weeds, cut mangrove, malama 'aina.

It's a multi-faceted education meant to fit in a multi-faceted modern Island life. "They have to learn to get along in this world," Bishop said. "It's 'talking the talk,' and making it work for today. We call it 'walking in both worlds.' "

Sprinkled among serious instruction are outings of equal Hawaiian importance: hula ki'i (Hawaiian puppets) and other performing arts, hiking, music and 'ukulele, and sports (including bodysurfing, windsurfing and surfing) — even robot technology.

With all these threads of the bigger canvas in place, occasionally the kumu pause to ho'oma'a, to practice, to drill — "to put it all back together," Bishop said — a gameplan for the modern world, based on a foundation of the ancients.

That is when, she said, "It clicks!"

The Advertiser's Wade Kilohana Shirkey is kumu of Na Hoaloha O Ka Roselani No'eau. He writes on Island life.