The Kū‘ula Marine Resource Management Project endeavors to improve student and teacher achievement through development and training on curriculum focused upon traditional Hawaiian concepts and practices of marine resource management.

The long-range (3-5 years) target population is the native Hawaiian community, which has lost much of its knowledge of marine resource management practices. The Kū‘ula Curriculum will gather the knowledge of our elder fishermen and combine it with the traditional Hawaiian philosophy illustrated in the Kumulipo genealogy chant so our Hawaiian students may understand their connections with the land and sea. The Kū‘ula Curriculum will bridge the core academic subjects of math, science and language arts, with the relevance of traditional Hawaiian practices of coastal shoreline and fishery management so that our Hawaiian students may experience greater motivation to learning.

The immediate-range (3 years) target population will be the native Hawaiian students in our schools, and the teachers of native Hawaiian students. The Kū‘ula Curriculum will be disseminated state-wide, with state-wide teacher training workshops on the implementation of the curriculum in their classrooms.

The short-range (1-3 years) target population will be the students of the predominantly native Hawaiian Ka ‘Umeke Kā‘eo public charter school. Ka ‘Umeke Kā‘eo is located in the Keaukaha Hawaiian Homes residential area, a completely Hawaiian community.

In Year One of the project, teachers and students at Ka ‘Umeke Kā‘eo participated in field projects while teachers developed the curriculum. These field projects took advantage of the traditional fishponds in Keaukaha that the Edith Kanaka‘ole Foundation has lease to. We also took advantage of the Keaukaha shoreline as a model to develop a coastal Resource Management plan that may be replicated as a student project in schools state-wide. In Year Two, the draft curriculum was pilot-tested in Ka ‘Umeke Kā‘eo, and three other predominantly native Hawaiian school programs. In Year Three, the pilot-tested and revised Kū‘ula Curriculum will be disseminated state-wide, and complemented with state-wide teacher training workshops for implementation of the curriculum.

Go the the Kumulipo, click here.

Go to the Puke No‘eau, click here.

Go to the Kū‘ula K-12 Curricula, click here.