May 2022 Newsletter
The Journey from Spring to Summer
This week we see the very beginnings of a new moon cycle, guiding us along a beautiful and multi-faceted journey across the celestial ocean above. From the pre-dawn Aquariids meteor shower this and next week (look towards Ka Lupe O Kawelo as a starting point) and a lunar eclipse mid-month visible just before sunrise, to the intensity of kau ka lā i ka lolo (solar zenith) at mid-day in the last two weeks of the month, the symphony of the sun, moon and stars is awaiting us.
Like so many here in Hawaiʻi, we have been following the voyage of Hōkūleʻa as she travels the ancestral searoad of Kealaikahiki, accompanied by sister canoe Hikianalia. All 3 of our EI team members have served as voyagers and land crew to Hōkūleʻa and Polynesian Voyaging Society in the past. For this Kealaikahiki Voyage, we are humbled and honored to join PVS to facilitate the educational mission of the Voyage. Please visit the Voyage Dashboard at Waahonua.com, the education waʻa for PVS, to see the latest updates from the crew. Waʻa Honua also features educational resources created by partner organizations, such as this Heritage Pūʻolo resource, Illuminating Our Ancestral Connections, created by Kamehameha Schools Kaiwakīloumoku Pacific Indigenous Institute with support from Nakupuna Foundation.
As part of our commitment to the mission and vision of PVS, Hōkūleʻa, and the mission of the upcoming Moananuiākea Voyage to engage people around the world to learn and practice The Way of the Navigator in their own lives, we are helping PVS to host a Summer Institute focused on voyaging- and mālama honua-related professional and curriculum development for educators. This Institute is one of several being coordinated through the Hawaiʻi Online Portal for Education (HOPE) project, which aims to engage Hawaiʻi teachers in accessing and creating content for Hawaiʻi learners. Eligible participants will receive stipends for the time and energy you invest in content creation.
If voyaging isn’t your calling, check out one of the many other opportunities we are offering for Hawaiʻi teachers to join each other in a community of practice around creating digital resources for relevant, relatable, and engaging teaching and learning. Institutes involve adaptation of existing high-quality Open Education Resources to a Hawaiʻi context; this includes modification of existing high quality culturally-grounded, place-based curriculum from across Hawaiʻi to current standards alignments, and other exciting focus areas. We also welcome independent authors who have already created classroom content to adapt your work to our HOPE OER format! All participants will be eligible to receive up to $5000 stipends.
Register your interest at bit.ly/HOPE22Summer, and contact the HOPE team for more information at [email protected].
At this time of new beginnings, we also want to thank our SY 2021-2022 partners for the opportunity to contribute to your programs this past school year. With every workshop, PD, or office hour we hold, our team at EI is truly left better than we were before – each of our partners allows us to receive wisdom, guidance, inspiration and growth, as we co-create with you. Thank you, Compassionate Koʻolaupoko, P20 GearUp and Native Hawaiian Education Association, Boys & Girls Club of Hawaiʻi, Waimea High School, Liliʻuokalani Trust, and the ʻĀINA-IS leadership team at UH Maui College. Through your invitation, we are able to reach hundreds of educators and families, and thousands of young learners.
We also mahalo statewide entities Hawaiʻi Broadband Hui and Hawaiʻi Parent Teacher Student Association for the invitation to present about ALOHA-based leading, living, and learning. We hope that the time we shared helped to spark conversation and motivation to find purpose and passion in serving community, built upon a Foundation of ALOHA.
We also share with you all news of ʻAnakala Pono Shim’s celebration of life, and opportunities to join us on the journey he inspired:
Pono Shim’s Celebration of Life will be observed on Saturday, May 7, 2022 at Bishop Memorial Chapel of the Kamehameha Schools Kapālama Campus. Visitation begins at 9:30am, with service to follow at 10:30am. Masks will be required. A livestream of the service will be available, as well as a recording after the service for those who wish to join remotely or asynchronously. Further details will be shared at malamaponofoundation.org as they become available.
The Mālama Pono Foundation will perpetuate and grow ʻAnakala’s vision of Hawaiʻi as a unique place of healing and source of the universal spirit of ALOHA for the world. The establishment and launch of the Foundation will be led by Miki, Pono’s mentee, who will be facilitating the curation of Pono’s work and other Hawaiʻi wisdom sources into resources for students and practitioners of ALOHA, past, present and future. Donations to support the launch of the foundation and its endeavors are currently being accepted through EI. Please feel free to reach out to Miki if you have any questions or thoughts about MPF.
As part of our collective dedication to the growth of ALOHA in the world, we invite you to join us in our next Foundations of ALOHA cohort. FOA combines lessons and experiences that we have gathered as teachers, parents, entrepreneurs, and voyagers; our core teachings are guided by the wisdom of Aunty Pilahi Paki via our work with renowned storyteller Pono Shim. ʻAnakala hoped that we would continue to share what he taught us about ALOHA, and that we each evolve his ALOHA practices into our own — much like his practice changed and grew over the course of his life, his wish is for every person to be on a journey of growing their ALOHA. We know that growth can be challenging, and our FOA ʻohana is often the just-right support we need to keep striving to be better than our best.
This month, we continue our celebration of that which inspired ʻAnakala Pono by reading Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee. ʻAnakala’s fondness for Bruce Lee movies and the lessons learned from his life story is well-known to those close to him, he often quoted from this book in our conversations. We understand that folks might be interested and have not yet had the opportunity to read the book, please feel free to join us wherever you might be in your process of exploring this book. We are pretty loosely structured in terms of the reading and have an asynchronous sharing doc that helps us keep track of thoughts, inspirations, and quotes that we find memorable as we move through our readings in our own timeline. Join us on Tuesday, May 24 from 12pm – 1pm for our Zoom discussion.
Thank you, friends, for being with us on our journey and for inviting us to join yours. Let us be calibration points for each other, as we grow in our practice of ALOHA, and voyage towards a loving, peaceful world.
ke aloha,
Miki, Hye Jung, and Logan
Ulu o ka lā (2870).
“The sun grows.”
Said of the light of sunrise; used to determine the primary direction of east.