Saving Schools Through Community Partnerships
UPDATED 7/20/11 8:07 a.m.
Gov. Neil Abercrombie‘s appointees to the Hawaii State Board of Education talked a lot during their confirmation hearings about building partnerships with community organizations. This year’s Lab School @ Punahou is a great example of the possibilities such partnerships present.
The Lab School, a two-week technology workshop for public and private school teachers hosted by , included among its programs one called “Sustainable Schools: Educator鈥檚 Energy Exchange.” The energy exchange introduced nine middle school teachers from six public schools on Oahu to a renewable energy curriculum developed by the Maui Economic Development Board’s Women in Technology. The exchange focused on how to teach that curriculum with technology.
supplied many of the materials for the and promoted its free lending library for science- and energy-related schoolroom supplies.
Each of the teachers will bring the new curriculum into their classrooms this fall, along with $400-$500 of science experiment supplies provided by Punahou.[1.
“We really wanted to develop a collaborative learning environment,” said Gentry Hirohata, a seventh-grade teacher at Punahou who helped facilitate the workshop.
“Besides imparting the content and curriculum, we wanted to talk about teaching strategies. This was not designed to be about Punahou teaching these educators something, so we asked them about the strategies they use in their classrooms, and it became more of a dialogue that way.”
The partnership with HECO was valuable, he said, in part because of the supplies donated. The electric company also educated teachers about its , which has been supporting public and private schools with educational supplies and teaching materials for more than three decades.
Partnerships like this, while not the norm, are also not unique in Hawaii. provides support for programs like Waianae High School’s Searider Productions Academy and Nanakuli High and Intermediate School’s New Tech initiative. The and have also entered into partnership with the schools to use sustainable agriculture and digital media as a means for teaching entrepreneurship.
On a smaller scale, technology nonprofit has also forged a relationship with Hauula Elementary School by distributing more than 100 laptop computers to the school’s fourth, fifth and sixth graders.
Board of Education member Cheryl Kauhane Lupenui said she hopes to forge more of these successful collaborative efforts, bringing the best of the private and nonprofit sectors into the public school system. Partnerships like these will become increasingly critical as the public school system adjusts to ever deeper budget cuts.
1. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that HECO donated the classroom supplies, when in fact it was Punahou that donated them.鈫
