New Hope in Old Hawaii

By Andrea Bennett on September 22, 2009 7:55 AM

At principal Tim Lino’s Hawaiian school, each day starts with “wa oli.”

The entire school gathers for traditional chanting, singing and prayer as students ask their ancestors who have blazed the trail before them to spiritually enter the school and help them learn.

Lino, a member of the USC Rossier School of Education Ed.D. program’s Hawaii cohort, said Ke Kula ‘o ‘Ehunuikaimalino aims to engage students in history, preserving their language, culture and community. The public Hawaiian language immersion school is located in Kealakekua, a rural town on the west side of the Big Island.

It has also surpassed academic expectations, making its adequate yearly progress targets in five of the last six years, while student scores on the Hawaii State Assessment have shown dramatic improvement year after year in both reading and math.

The school, known as ‘Ehunui for short, is one of only 22 such Hawaiian language immersion schools in the state of Hawaii. Just a handful of its students do not have any Hawaiian ethnicity.

“The premise of Hawaiian language immersion schools is to revive and perpetuate the Hawaiian language, which was basically banned and heading toward extinction due to colonization,” Lino said. “There has been a strong movement in the last 20 years to establish validity and purpose for the Hawaiian people. This educational framework is part of that movement.”

Early grades are taught entirely in Hawaiian and English is introduced into classroom instruction in the fifth grade. By middle school, content is delivered in both languages. But the school does more than just foster bilingual fluency among its K-12 students.

“Education has been inserted into our students’ culture, as opposed to culture being inserted into their education,” he said. “Overall, it also gives Native Hawaiian children an improved sense of self-identity and creates a learning environment which is culturally relevant and responsive.”

The framework of the school is built upon the concepts of “Na Honua Mauli Ola,” or culturally healthy and responsive learning environments. The six cultural guiding themes are cultural identity, wisdom, sense of place, sense of discovery, sense of self and perspective or cultural lens, Lino said.

The school garden project is one example of a culture- and place-based practice prevalent with their ancestors, Lino said. It is integrated into all core academic areas as students learn to use traditional Hawaiian methods of cultivation for their garden.

Before planting the first seeds, students and their teachers chant and dance to bless the new garden space and ask for fertility for their crops.

Lino came on board as principal in 2002 to oversee the transition of ’Ehunui from a school-within-a-school to its own self-contained campus, and he has since watched it flourish. Students face high expectations when it comes to their academic achievement at the school.

“There is a sense of hope for Native Hawaiian children, who are traditionally labeled as low achievers with low motivation,” Lino said. “Our school functions under the mantra of ‘success is the only option.’ ”

And success has been the outcome so far.

Lino said his experience in the Ed.D. program has affirmed his work at ‘Ehunui.

“Most of what we have been exposed to and learned through the Ed.D. program is directly applicable to my daily work and mission,” he said.

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