The timing couldn't be better for the meeting of the minds that convened this week on the McKinley High School campus.

The Pacific Educational Conference, drawing 1,000 educators from the region, is among the largest gatherings of Pacific education professors held in the Islands.

Given the social and economic challenges faced by Hawai'i's growing Micronesian community, this is an opportune time to sharpen strategies that will help the youth adapt and succeed.

It's being co-sponsored by the state Department of Education, the University of Hawai'i College of Education and Pacific Resources for Education and Learning, a nonprofit corporation that works with school systems throughout the Pacific.

The program of workshops cover an impressively wide array of topics, all of which seem rooted in reality, with a clear aim of helping teachers cope with classroom challenges.

For example, "Understanding Marshallese Students" was one subject on yesterday's program, targeting teachers, counselors and other school staffers who need help bridging the cultural gap and grasping the effects of the children's culture and the educational system they left behind.

Non-Micronesian participants also will get a more general introduction to the geography, history, languages, and cultures of the Micronesian states. And educators will learn ways to help students overcome barriers to learning English so they can succeed in mainstream classrooms.

It will be important for participants to bring into the discussion concerns about the upheaval faced by Pacific Island families new to Hawai'i — a topic certainly difficult to avoid, considering the current statistics on homelessness. The findings reported in Sunday's Advertiser — Micronesians increasingly populating homeless shelters — surely add urgency to the mission of helping families stabilize and boosting prospects for learning among the keiki.

It's good to see Pacific educators here for a conference that one hopes will become a regular event. Only this broad sharing of knowledge can lay the groundwork for academic success among Hawai'i's newest arrivals.