Are you ready to empower your students and staff with the ABCs of Healthy Relationships? This interactive session dives into the crucial elements of agency, boundaries, and consent, equipping you to cultivate a thriving, safe, and supportive school environment. Learn actionable insights to lead your school towards a future built on healthy relationships, where every person feels physically, emotionally and psychologically safe.
Learn about how schools and ʻāina-based organizations are partnering to make ʻāina-based education more accessible, relevant, and impactful for Hawaiʻi’s keiki. This session showcases a few of the many bright spots emerging across the state, where innovative collaborations between educators and ʻāina partners are transforming the learning experience through culture, environment, and community connection. Participants will hear stories from schools and partners who are co-creating curriculum, redesigning learning environments, and embedding ʻāina into the heart of teaching and learning. These exemplars demonstrate what is possible when schools embrace community expertise and commit to grounding education in Hawaiʻi’s unique sense of place. Designed for school and system leaders, this session will spark ideas and inspire action toward building or strengthening your own ʻāina-based partnerships.
Discover how Ka‘a‘awa and Kahalu‘u Elementary is building a vibrant school culture of leaders through the 8 Habits of Leader In Me. This exploration will uncover their strategies and processes for nurturing leadership and a strong school community. This session will equip you with practical approaches to empower everyone in your school community to develop a leadership mindset.
Implementation of the Math Pact creates coherence and consistency across grade levels by establishing shared language, notation, representations, and teaching practices to support all students’ mathematical success. We explore the elimination of language and rules that expire and instead investigate developing generalizations through high-quality, standards-aligned instruction. The Math Pact engages all stakeholders—including teachers, coaches, administrators, families, and paraprofessionals—in building a unified mathematical foundation ensuring every student develops deep conceptual understanding.
In this session, we will explore the domains of child development, focusing on the long-standing research that supports the whole-child developmental perspective for early learning. This will be connected to the concept of play-based, nature-based learning as an intentional, developmentally appropriate practice with strong evidence for effectiveness for supporting young children’s learning and development.
The Kalāheo Math Task Force was established with administrators and teacher representatives from the K-12 pipeline in order to develop key recommendations, implement common Focused Interim Assessment Blocks (FIABs), and analyze data together. As a result of this collaborative effort, they were recently awarded the Teaching and Learning Innovation Award through the Smarter Balanced Consortium.
When Tier One instruction in reading isn’t enough, Multi-tiered Systems of Support for Reading (MTSS-R) offers a clear, strategic framework for identifying and supporting struggling learners through targeted, data-driven interventions. This session provides an overview of MTSS-R, including how to use appropriate assessments to diagnose student needs and ensure interventions are precisely aligned. Learn the nuts and bolts of effective intervention and get a preview of next year’s MTSS-R training designed to help educators respond with confidence when students struggle.
Transitioning elementary school students into middle school can be a significant step. Prepare students for new academic challenges and increased independence. Encourage open communication and equip them with strategies for success in a new environment.
Explore the depth and diversity of ʻāina-based education across Hawaiʻi in this open gallery walk experience. ʻĀina partners across the islands will be available throughout the day to share how they are supporting schools through place-based programs, student learning experiences, and educator professional development. From cultural and environmental education to hands-on teacher workshops, these partners are helping to realize Hawaiʻi’s vision of students who are globally competitive and locally committed. Whether you're looking to build new partnerships, strengthen existing ones, or simply be inspired by the innovative work happening in our communities, this gallery walk is an opportunity to connect directly with those doing the work on the ground. Come engage at your own pace, ask questions, and discover the many ways ʻāina is being woven into the fabric of education across the state.
