In response to the urgent call to transform K-12 education, Malama Honua Learning Center (MHLC)will provide a teacher education program embedded in a public charter school that prepares students to address today's most pressing social and ecological challenges. MHLC's online Master's degree and certificate programs will create a community of educators working to provide contemporary, relevant, and highly effective instruction for 21st century students and 21st century needs.

Please describe your innovation?

The Hawaiian Education Council will grow an existing Master’s Degree Program in Instructional Leadership for 21st Century Teaching and Learning, creating an expanded Professional Education Program. The program will provide both Master’s degrees and graduate-level certificates that are fully embedded in a public charter school. Degree and certificate candidates can teach at MHLC public charter school, or cohort members can enroll from any island due to a format that combines residencies, site visits, and online classes. Through “eCollege” software, networks of educators can connect easily through computers and smartphones, creating a virtual community of practice. This network of teachers will be working toward common goals, improving their instruction, and sharing their work with others to learn new strategies. By collaborating to coach each other through project-based and innovative instruction, they will create a “change incubator” for transforming the K-12 student experience.

What is the problem or situation that your innovation seeks to address?

While the concept of an “excellent education” has changed radically, teacher preparation programs have retained a traditional approach. There is an urgent need for training in contemporary instructional models, and educating K-12 students who are not only critical thinkers, but compassionate problem solvers well-versed in today’s social and ecological challenges. Though teachers are increasingly asked to deliver place-based, project-based, and technology-aided instruction, they have few reference points and traditions to draw on. For new teachers in particular, the experience can be isolating and overwhelming, even without the added challenge of teaching in a completely new way. In addition to providing support, communities of practice, and continuing education opportunities, the MHLC model provides avenues for teachers to cultivate in themselves and their students the compassionate, positive, and astute “mind of the navigator” that will help improve global society

What effort have you made to test out your new idea?

The Hawaii Association of Independent Schools (HAIS) founded a Master’s Degree Program for private school leaders in 2002, and in 2010, it established the Instructional Leadership for 21st Century Teaching and Learning Master’s Degree in Education (IL-MED). The degree option is provided by Chaminade University through a partnership agreement, though the IL-MED and certificate programs are not tied to a campus location. Using the Pearson Learning Studio platform (previously called “eCollege”) to provide a shared learning environment for students via both computers and smartphones, IL-MED creates a virtual student network. In addition to established virtual network abilities, HAIS has developed and leveraged strong local partnerships and networks to execute its IL-MED program. The program will now migrate to HEC, HAIS’s sister organization with a public school focus, and linked to its public charter school.

What is particularly noteworthy or novel about your innovation?

This endeavor will create and maintain a network of teachers and leaders with a shared vision of education redesign, breakthrough student instruction methods, and social change. It leverages widely available technology, such as personal computers and iPads, to conduct courses, disseminate materials, and maintain communities of practice. These communities of practice will create and grow relevant, research-based, and real-world teaching models. As important as the “how” of school reform is the “why”: MHLC and its affiliated charter school believe that today’s local regional, and global society demands that young people and their teachers acquire not only enhanced skills, but the ability for compassionate, insightful, and courageous problem solving. MHLC will explicitly cultivate, in both teachers and children, astute observational capabilities, a sense of mālama, and the ability to gain and apply ever-changing information in creative ways.

What impact do you expect your innovation will have on the problem or situation described in the previous question?

We expect that our innovation will provide teachers, potential teachers, schools and the state with a new model for teacher education that truly supports teachers and schools in implementing best practices in K-12 education. MHLC would provide the state’s first Master degree program in education that is rooted in a charter school, versus in a university setting. Alternatives to the university-based model are important for education and school reform, and a degree and certificate program grounded in a charter school setting will help develop people who want to see a direct connection between their research and their practice in the classroom. In addition, Mālama Honua Learning Center can promote teaching that helps students gain contemporary academic skills and recover endangered values like caring, courage, and integrity that are crucial for helping people of all ages chart a successful course through life.

What other community partners will you need if your innovation is to scale beyond your organization?

MHLC will strengthen its partnership with the Hawaii Department of Education to involve their teachers in its programs, and become an approved provider of continuing education credits. MHLC has established a partnership with Kamehameha Schools to provide certificate-based teacher education programs to teachers and leaders in Native Hawaiian culture based charter schools, and with Punahou School, which has committed staff resources and expertise as a part of its “private school with a public focus” initiative. Additional private school, public school, and charter school partners and funding partners will be cultivated to expand the network of teachers working together across public/private boundaries to improve education for all of Hawaii’s students. MHLC will thus take the existing and established structure and network of the IL-MED program and apply it to broader needs in our island community.

Why are your organization, partners, and key personnel suited to take on this project?

Hawaiian Educational Council, Hawaii Association of Independent Schools, and Mālama Honua Learning Center leadership includes visionaries such as Nainoa Thompson, President of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and Robert Witt, President and CEO of HAIS and HEC. Ryan Masa, “Educational Design Engineer” will establish the connection between MHLC Professional Education Programs and the charter school. HAIS Institute for 21st Century Teaching & Learning Director, Dr. Philip Bossert, will coordinate the IL-MED and certificate program activities for MHLC. These key staff members have collectively accrued decades of experience in public and private K-12 and higher education, and have spoken, written, and presented nationally on the requirements of 21st century education, and the new frontier of preparation and education required for both students and the teachers that educate them.