September 2025 Newsletter
A decade of EI, our IWA-verse, and the next leg of our ALOHA journey
We greet you once again in the moments following the Autumnal Equinox, when Ka Lā crosses the celestial equator and guides us through significant transitions through lessons in balance, the harmony and contrast of light and dark, and a shift from the dry heat of summer towards the cool wet of winter. It has been quite a while (3 years, exactly) since our last newsletter; much has changed, and yet stayed very much the same. Our journey continues to evolve with new opportunities to grow and shift, as well as strengthening connections to our forever partners and friends. And learning, oh the learning – we continue to learn every day, some lessons easier than others, some trial-and-error filled with what seems like an exponential number of errors per trial, lots of growth in times of discomfort and newness, tears shed in times of sadness but more in times of laughing so hard we end of crying and gasping for air, but always with ALOHA for each other, for you, for all. And then, after all that hard work of growing and learning, comes the even harder work of trying to put that learning into practice, to live our lives with the gifts of knowledge we have been granted by so many, and to share with others with both discernment and hope.
This newsletter marks the 10-year anniversary of the birth of Education Incubator; we pause in this moment to honor our past and the many people and places that have brought us to this moment, and to set intentions for the road ahead as we build forward upon the foundation that has been set by many hands and hearts over the past decade.
We are so grateful for your patience and support in helping us evolve and push forward in our work. We remain dedicated to the setting of foundations of ALOHA in every person, home, and community upon which to build inspired, loving spaces for healing and growth; please join us in celebrating a decade of EI.
Newsletters have been slow in coming for many reasons – like many others, we stepped back into in-person workshops and meetings with even greater frequency and urgency than before the pandemic, filling our schedules and lives in our desire to help support so many organizations and efforts that called upon us. We entered a season of mourning for our beloved mentor Pono Shim, with Miki in particular moving through her own apprehensions and introspection as Uncle Pono’s successor and what it means to carry the legacy of Pono Shim and Pilahi Paki as part of her kuleana. We also entered a season of incredible growth, both emotionally, intellectually and physically (our families grew and grew!), and the days and weeks turned into months and years without us deliberately creating space to share these stories with you.
We now enter this next chapter of EI, our lives, and our work with energy, purpose, and deep gratitude for all that has come before, and are committed to sharing with you all the joyous things that you help to make possible just by being you and being part of our support network of family and friends.
We have been contemplating what to share as we renew our efforts in sharing the work we are so honored to be called to do in support of so many people, places, and practices. And although we know that 3 years of reflections and highlights is very likely too much to read at once, we wondered what the balance is between over-sharing and under-celebrating. With those considerations in mind, we have decided to share a few things every week until we catch up with our memorializing through the end of 2025.
In the newsletters to come between now and the end of December, you’ll find stories such as:
Stories of People
In this newsletter:
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- official welcoming of new members of our immediate families, Jon and Haylee
- best wishes to Program Assistant Logan Narikawa and Summer Fellow Joshua Worth on their next steps beyond EI;
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- messages from our Board of Directors Herb Lee, Jr., Keoni Lee, Christine Matsuda and Brian Dote as they see us off into the next leg of the journey;
- introductions to our 2025 BOD Brian Dote, John Huliheʻe, Molly Gismervik Mamaril, and Roy Kimura;
- celebrating members of our network of family and friends in the work, starting with Cereescia Sandoval of the Center for Love & Justice, Cherilyn Inouye of Compassionate Koʻolau, and Kelea Levy of Kaupena Wai and Kanaka Economic Development Alliance.
Stories of Place
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- opportunities to join Nā Kama Kai for their keiki and kumu Ocean Safety Clinics throughout Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi Island, and Maui, including a companion PDE3 course for teachers;
- collaborations in curriculum development with kumu and ʻāina stewards on Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island through the Office of Hawaiian Education’s Kaiapuni Curriculum Development Project;
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- highlights from our work with Polynesian Voyaging Society in support of the Moananuiākea Voyage and Pae ʻĀina Sail over the past two years;
- glimpses into the incredible Hoʻākea Mauka to Makai statewide program developed by the Hawaiʻi Department of Education inspired by Hōkūleʻa and Malama Honua that supports students and teachers in every community to engage deeply with regional waʻa, ʻāina and kai partners and develop the mindset of the navigator;
- gratitudes for the opportunity to deeply support Oregon’s Outdoor Schools in their journey to decolonize outdoor science education in Oregon through a multi-year partnership with Northwest Regional Outdoor Science School;
- honoring 50 years of advocacy and the continued growth of education and outreach through the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana, Kahoʻolawe Island Reserve Commission, and all the kua and kōkua of Kanaloa Kahoʻolawe.
Stories of Practice
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- the launch of Wayfinder Hawaiʻi in partnership with Wayfinder K12 and Hawaiʻi Department of Education for 20,000+ public middle school and alternative learning program students across Hawaiʻi;
- celebrating the teachings of Uncle Pono Shim in the opening Keynote of the 22nd Annual Hawai‘i International Summit of the Institute on Violence, Abuse & Trauma April 2025 and the video recording of his closing Keynote of the 19th Annual Summit in April 2022;
- a next step for Foundations of ALOHA (FOA) and ALOHA Response/Higher Skills Academy (HSA);
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- sharing Innovation With Aloha (IWA) through programs and practices with schools and learning organizations like Liliuokalani Trust, Department of Labor’s Work Hawaii Youth Program, and Librarians of Hawaiʻi Department of Education and the State of Hawaiʻi
- humbly accepting featured speaking invitations at Kamehameha Schools Ed Tech Conference and HIDOE Education Leadership Institute
- honored to host Uncle Sam Low for screening of The Navigators, discussion of Hawaiki Rising, and book signings on Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island
- supporting the Baldwin-Kekaulike-Kulanihakoʻi-Maui Complex Area and Lāhaina Complex with professional development for educators on ALOHA and wayfinding life with purpose
our work to support the employees and leadership of the City & County of Honolulu to develop, practice and grow ALOHA through all of C&CoH departments - updates on the work and focus of Mālama Pono Foundation, another non-profit we founded to share and enrich Uncle Pono’s legacy of ALOHA teachings and practice
Thank you for holding space with us as we commemorate and honor some of the work we have been entrusted with for the past few years; although this series of writings over the next few months will not cover every opportunity, engagement, or lesson learned since our last newsletter, we endeavor to share insights into the journey and celebrate the family, friends, and mentors that help us to grow and evolve.
May our time together always bring us tears of joy and laughter through the trying times, the salt water of Kanaloa blessing and healing us from within. And may we always have hearts and bellies (and sometimes mouths) full of all that is ʻono for the soul.
ke aloha nō,
Miki & Hye Jung
Stories of People
There are so very many special people we are privileged to learn from and share space with. We begin our look into the past few years in this issue by introducing you to new members of our family, and celebrating two people who gifted EI with their talents before flowing to their next impactful destination.
Welcome, Haylee and Jon! 
In the loving darkness of one of the darkest nights of the year, we welcomed the bright star known as Haylee 한들 as the fourth member of ʻOhana Tano! Haylee emerged into the realm of air and light shortly after Winter Solstice, joining mom Hye Jung, dad DJ and big brother Hayden on December 29, 2023. Haylee is often found rough-housing with her brother, sometimes closing a Zoom meeting, and almost always eating, and incurably adorable, always.
On the next solstice, our EI family witnessed another major event, this one decades in the making. Finally closing the loop on their 赤い糸 (akai ito, Red Thread of Fate) after their first encounter almost 45 years ago at temple, Miki and Jon became Mr. and (dr.) Mrs. Tomita Okamoto on Summer Solstice 2024 – accompanied by friends and family, seen and unseen, on that longest day of the year and under the full moon. Jon is often found 30,000 feet in the air; when he’s home he’s also almost always eating, and always caring for Miki and Mayumi.
We have been busy growing our little families; perhaps that is one of the reasons it has taken us so long to share all of our updates with you, our EI and HSA ʻohana. We did not forget about you, you are always in our thoughts and hearts. As our families have doubled over the years of our EI journey, they have brought us so much inspiration, growth, and love; we are so blessed to be so full and hope to be better about sharing our joys with you! Thank you for allowing us the time to focus on our families and homes – we are better for it, and filled with gentle strength for the path we will walk with you that lies ahead.Mahalo, Logan and Joshua!
After three years on our EI team, Logan Narikawa has moved on to his next adventure as an Evaluation Specialist with the Hawaiʻi Department of Education. At EI, Logan served as our resident researcher and general program assistant, contributing invaluable insights and supports across several initiatives. Notably, he played a pivotal role in the ʻĀINA-IS (Advancing Informal Native ʻĀina-based Inspirations in STEM) program we facilitated for UH Maui College, where his expertise and dedication helped shape meaningful collaborations and outcomes across various ʻāina-based organizations to develop new frameworks for identifying the valuable contribution of ʻike Hawaiʻi to enrich and deepen current STEM education. We are deeply grateful for Logan’s contributions and the thoughtfulness he brought to every project, and celebrate his continued service to Hawaiʻi’s students and educators through his current role with the HIDOE.
A few summers ago through the generosity of Nakupuna Foundation, we were so blessed to host an amazing young scholar, Joshua Worth! During his internship, he focused on Stories and Medicine, exploring how storytelling heals and transforms. He connected scholarly research on the neuroscience of storytelling to the teachings of Uncle Pono Shim, highlighting the healing power of ALOHA-based wisdom. Born and raised on the island of Maui, he graduated with honors from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs with a minor in cognitive science. When we bid a hui hou to Josh in 2023, he shared that he hoped to eventually return to Hawaiʻi to serve the communities that helped raise him; he is currently doing just that, as the inaugural Abigail Kawānanakoa Foundation’s Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana’ole Fellow in the Office of Senator Brian Schatz. During his time with us, he wrote this beautiful poem that we share with you, which brings to life the vision of Hawaiʻi’s storied past and aspiration for the future that was shared with us by Uncle Pono and another of our teachers, Nainoa Thompson.Sestina Pono
by ʻAlohikamahina
Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono.
The life of the land is preserved in righteousness.
Ocean brushing winds carry a story
Flailing salts pray on faces voyaging afar,
Forwarding sails as it was our language
Over rolling hills of blue, the seafarers kept
The constellations as a compass
Claiming sundwelling horizons to narrow the seas
Searching for emerging mountains from the sea,
Untouched shorelines that had yet to hold stories
Of flourishing families exchanging compassions,
Tending to fishponds and river fed farms.
Abundances of calabashes kept
Full and flowing from the fruitful land,
Yawning valleys echoed the people’s language
Rich with rhythm and riddle like the sea
With swelling ripples. Currents of knowledge kept
Carefully preserved in the passing of stories
That noted the names of the calm faraway
Winds ushering clouds to pass
Showers on the quenching earth encompassed
By the faithfully seamless blue language
Of salted waters. Fluent in faring
Forth in famine and feasting in the season
Of bountiful harvests, celebrating stories
Of the sacred sustaining land that kept
Families fed. The land was kept
Crowned by the harmony of people compassing
Their end by sowing seeds and saplings into storied
Gardens and groves. In response to the language
Of their labor, sun-ripened beams sprouted from seas
Dawning enlightenment on the fallows farther
Upland and the fleets of canoes not far
Off the calling coasts. Mountain fallen winds swept
Through homelands, making their way to the seas
Swinging between the archipelago, passing
Waters connecting those who spoke a language
Heavy laden with ancestral songs and stories.
In the center of the seas, we farmed
The stories given to our children to safekeep,
The land encompassed in life is our language.
Stories of Place
In our work, we so often find ourselves in magical spaces with magical people. These amazing stewards of land, ocean, and everything in between and up above are doing great things to support place-based education that help our youth and communities to develop deep roots and connections to ʻāina, ʻike Hawaiʻi, and their potential to navigate our communities to a better future for all, and we are honored to serve beside them. Since our very beginnings a decade ago, our work has been anchored in place, guided by the wisdom of communities, schools, and cultural practitioners. From Kalapaki to Kahoʻolawe to Kūkanono to Kawaihae, our partners embody ALOHA in action; with every partner and project, we are reminded that collaboration helps guide us all forward to our desired state of a thriving Hawaiʻi, Moananuiākea, and planet.
In this newsletter, we celebrate Duane DeSoto and the team at Nā Kama Kai, the non-profit he founded 17 years ago. With a mission to connect keiki to kai and ʻāina to nurture a deeper sense of aloha and kuleana for the natural environment and themselves, Nā Kama Kai’s programs have reached 50,000 youth across Hawaiʻi through ocean safety and stewardship education. Part of this expanding outreach has been to engage with public school educators, particularly those that serve the youngest and hardest to reach communities, in hopes of bridging the economic divide between vulnerable youth and ocean safety. EI serves as the professional development partner to Nā Kama Kai, hosting the teacher education component of the Ocean Clinics offered by Nā Kama Kai statewide. Since 2023, Nā Kama Kai and EI have hosted over 100 teachers on Oʻahu, Maui, Kauaʻi, and Hawaiʻi Island at one of these ocean clinics.
Every month, 15 educators are able to register for the Nā Kama Kai Kumu Klinic, which takes place at 9am on the day of their monthly Keiki Clinic. These Kumu Klinics are FREE in-person events that allow 15 lucky teachers to learn from Nā Kama Kai’s experts – young watermen and women who are passionate about ocean, culture, and stewardship. Building upon the incredible success and impact of their Oʻahu-based clinics, Nā Kama Kai has been able to secure grant funding to support bringing the Nā Kama Kai Ocean Clinics once a year to Kauaʻi, Maui, and Hawaiʻi Island.
The SY2025-26 round of clinics opened with a beautiful day at Kalapaki on Kauaʻi, with a dozen educators growing their pilina to ocean, ʻike Hawaiʻi and each other. After completing this 2-hour in-person clinic with Nā Kama Kai, teachers are invited to participate in a FREE PDE3 course facilitated by our team at EI, where they are supported throughout the year to develop and implement lesson plans that bring the content knowledge of the clinic to the classroom and are also eligible for credits towards salary increases as allowable by the HIDOE guidelines. Once you sign up for a clinic, you will receive a calendar invite and a link to the virtual orientation session. Teachers will be registered in the PDE3 course after successfully attending an online orientation and an in-person clinic. Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions about this incredible opportunity!
Upcoming Kumu Klinic opportunities include:
We were also invited to join the Office of Hawaiian Education’s Kaiapuni Curriculum Development Project as Project Manager/Curriculum Development specialists. Through this project, we were honored to work with kumu from Keaʻau Elementary and Ke Kula Kaiapuni o Kailua, professors from University of Hawaiʻi, Office of Hawaiian Education’s Kaiapuni support team, and ʻāina stewards Kauluakalana, Makuʻu Farm and Kohala Center at Nāmoku. Deep expertise was shared by Hawaiian cultural practitioners and educators from Oʻahu, Maui, and Hawaiʻi Island as we worked to create curriculum resources to elevate and strengthen HĀ connections and content from a ʻāina-focused, place-based perspective for the benefit of all students.
Unlike many other curriculum development projects, the Kaiapuni CDP started from a place of experience – that in order to begin to think about how to bring the ʻike and manaʻo of these spaces to our students, we must first deeply immerse in the learning ourselves. Kumu and ʻāina organization partners worked and learned together through multiple touch points, with days filled with insightful discussions on needs we see in our education ecosystem as we answered the call of what ʻāina needed from us with each visit. Ma ka hana ka ʻike defined the core components of this project, allowing each participant to grow by doing. Mahalo nui to the Office of Hawaiian Education and all the many partners involved in this 2-year project for all that we learned with and from you – ʻaʻohe pau ka ʻike i ka hālau hoʻokahi.
Nā Kama Kai Kumu Klinic + PDE3 Course
FREE OF COST!:
(see above for details)
Stories of Practice
Since our beginning, EI has been dedicated to helping young people to find their passion and purpose, rooted in the wisdom of Hawaiʻi and all the communities we may call home, with the hope that education might be an environment for putting young people at the center of navigating our communities to a better destination. Much of our inspiration in this work has come from our time spent as educators and voyagers with Hōkūleʻa and Polynesian Voyaging Society, and the art, science, and metaphor of Polynesian wayfinding that can help to unlock the navigator within each person. A decade ago when we worked for PVS, our team met with the founders of Wayfinder, who were developing a curriculum to help support young people to navigate their lives after high school with purpose. Wayfinder has matured into a nationally-renowned platform and program built upon a framework of purpose-based learning, which equips students and educators with the tools to navigate life’s complexities, build meaningful relationships, and grow into resilient, purpose-driven people. Wayfinder is committed to partner with educators to guide students through meaningful learning experiences that help them build belonging, purpose, and future-ready skills to help them succeed in school and life.
Wayfinder is one of the most effective and expansive PreK-12 social emotional learning and purpose development programs in existence; it traces its roots to the wisdom of wayfinders from various cultures, with the metaphor of wayfinding at the core of the curriculum. Through the leadership and generosity of the Hawaiʻi Department of Education and Superintendent Keith Hayashi’s office, we are now able to offer a version of our program that is deeply rooted in Polynesian wayfinding and Hawaiʻi values, honoring the traditions and wisdom that have inspired our work since we launched a decade ago.
Wayfinder Hawaiʻi provides the necessary school-based support to help young people contemplate what inspires them, what they care about, and what they want to contribute to the world through a developmentally appropriate, place based, scaffolded purpose development curriculum and support program. The initiative has provided support for 20,000+ public middle school and alternative learning program students thus far across Hawaiʻi as well as their hundreds of teachers and support staff to access and engage with Wayfinder and Wayfinder Hawaiʻi resources; we look forward to continuing to share this program with others schools and organizations, especially with public middle schools as the access will be free through the end of next school year!
In this first of many newsletter installations to share our journey over the past 3 years and into the future, our final feature is dedicated to our beloved Uncle Pono. Since his passing in 2022, we have been on a journey to discover our path forward with the program we developed together based on the wisdom he inherited from his great-aunt Pilahi Paki, Foundations of ALOHA, and all the programs and partnerships that have grown out of the inspired applications of his practices across so many organizations, schools, classrooms, and homes. Miki has also been on her own journey to uncover her path as his successor, navigating her own steps in sharing Uncle Pono and his practices of ALOHA and ALOHA Response learned with Aunty Pilahi with the world with discernment, humility and love.
One of the most important invitations of the hundreds we have received to share Uncle Pono’s teachings was to return to the place of his last talk, the Annual Hawaiʻi Summit of the Institute on Violence, Abuse & Trauma (IVAT). In his first public appearance in 3 years and the last talk he gifted us before departing this realm, Uncle Pono shared his final message of ALOHA and the journey of his life practice with the hundreds of attending caregivers, support providers, medical professionals, community advocates, and cultural practitioners in the conference closing keynote
It was at this time that he also publicly announced Miki as his successor, a discussion they had been sharing in private in the days, weeks and months leading up to that day. Miki was invited to return to this conference 3 years later to provide the opening keynote, where she shared part of the ALOHA journey and wisdom that Uncle Pono had been developing that was not yet public, his “Two Storms” teachings that can help all of us to better empathise and understand the storms we all carry within, and how they manifest externally in different ways in different people and conditions. Miki would like to extend her gratitude to all that have patiently waited for her to lean into the kuleana placed in her hands as Uncle Pono’s kākoʻo, as we evolve and emerge into our next version of EI and our work.
FOA is part of the legacy Uncle Pono left to EI, and we intend to continue to steward and grow it, but needed a chance to re-evaluate timing, accessibility and our own flexibility. We opened this newsletter – our love letter to our friends and families, really – with news of our growing families; with that growth, we also needed to grow in our ability to adapt and support our personal lives as fully as we have embraced our professional lives in our 15+ years of working together. With this letter, we are introducing one of hopefully many opportunities to continue to share Uncle Pono’s teaching, a next step for Foundations of ALOHA and ALOHA Response/Higher Skills Academy (HSA) we are piloting that is primarily asynchronous practice with synchronous, hopefully in-person anchor points – very much like Uncle Pono’s original structure for Higher Skills Academy. If you would like to help us learn, grow, and refine the program, please sign up here – whether this is your first experience with this ALOHA practice, or if you have been a student of Uncle Pono’s for years, we invite you to join us. If you are still with us up to this point, whew – you have come a long way! We really did try to think about what might be insightful, celebratory, informative and also honor and thank our partners and friends who have guided and shaped us during the past 3 years while we chose to work quietly – thank you for your patience as we tried to balance our desire to shout out all the great things we are seeing happening in communities in the work we are doing, with also the desire to stay behind the scenes in the less visible, supportive roles most people who work with us know we gravitate towards. We are sensitive to the self-promotion we see so often in the world around us, and yet want to broadcast widely how much love and inspiration we find in those we get to work with and share space with. And so we find ourselves, 3 years later, with a 14 page “short” newsletter that is just one installation of our on-going love letter to you, our beloved community.
We’ll be following up in the coming weeks with other past, present, and future celebrations of people, place and practice. Mahalo nui loa – for being uniquely you, and sticking with us as we endeavor to live into our perfectly imperfect lives, always with ALOHA.
ke aloha nō,
Miki & Hye Jung