Papa Hulilani
The Hawai‘i Island Astronomy Curriculum Development and Teacher Training Project seeks to improve student and teacher achievement through development and training on curriculum focused on traditional Hawaiian concepts and practices of wayfinding and environmental observation.

The Papa Hulilani Project will not only target Native Hawaiian students through out the State of Hawai‘i but will also seek to create a project that will bring the community together focusing on a single goal and in doing so promote a healthy and cooperative learning experience for everyone involved. We feel that the building of several traditional canoes is means of bringing the community into the educational experience in addition to promoting a sense of pride and community cohesiveness. We feel that this project could serve as a model for other Hawaiian communities statewide.

This curriculum although targeted at roughly 600 students K-12 from the Keaukaha area is meant to serve a broader audience. For the purposes of the grant, the curriculum will be developed and tested at Keaukaha Elementary School, Ka ‘Umeke Kā‘eo Elementary School and Ke Ana La‘ahana Secondary School. The cumulative student population is approximately 600. All of these campuses are located on or near the Keaukaha Hawaiian Home lands residential area, a completely Hawaiian community. Upon the completion of the pilot testing of the curriculum, it will be disseminated statewide, with teacher training workshops on the implementation of the curriculum in their classrooms. We hope to provide all Native Hawaiian students the opportunity to benefit form this curriculum. Lastly, we hope to target other Hawaiian communities by using Keaukaha as a model in community based projects, in our case fishpond restoration and management efforts.

In Year One of the Papa Hulilani project, teachers and students from the three Keaukaha schools will participate in field projects while teachers develop the curriculum. These field projects take advantage of the sites Edith Kanaka‘ole Foundation has management control over as well as other accessible site on the Island of Hawai‘i known for their astronomical importance. We will also explore modern techniques used in astronomy today and their relationships to traditional wayfinding. We believe that projects developed in our curriculum can be replicated statewide. In Year two, the draft curriculum will be pilot tested in the Keaukaha schools at which time adjustments will be made for the final draft. In Year Three, the pilot tested and revised Papahulilani Curriculum will be disseminated statewide, and complemented with statewide teacher training workshops from implementation of the curriculum.