What does it mean to be a teacher? More elemental, What does it mean to even contemplate being a teacher? And what does it mean to come back to one’s home community to teach, and learn? When does that moment happen when being a teacher first crosses one’s mind? I suspect that for some young people that moment happens and the questions arise when they first experience student-driven learning with a great teacher, guide or coach. A single class that engages a young learner could very well be the spark that ignites the fire and the passion to teach. I also suspect that for many young folk it is their “less than engaging” experiences “in class” that quickly turn them away from what many call the most noble profession. So what happens then? What forces come into play that, later, might tempt young folks into teaching? Surely it is not the pay, or the working conditions, or the way teachers are often in the crosshairs of our current cultural conflicts. 

For me, the answers to some of these questions came when I learned that one of my former podcast guests – the fiery, the frank, the brilliant Jonathon Medeiros – had been awarded one of the first two Hawai‘i Social Justice Educator Awards, a component of the Hanahau‘oli School Professional Development Center and University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa College of Education’s larger joint initiative, the Social Justice Education in Hawai‘i Project. Jonathon Medeiros was singled out by Hanahauʻoli’s Professional Development Center (PDC) because of his founding of something called The Future Teachers of Hawai‘i Club (FTHC) at Kauaʻi High School, where he is a language arts teacher. More on his club in a moment. 

Jonathon Medeiros is a National Board-certified high school teacher who has been teaching and learning about language arts and rhetoric for 17 years with students on Kauaʻi, where he was born and raised. He and his students learn together about curiosity, community, and place. They build deeper connections to each other and the places they live by being curious about where they live, diving into the stories of those places, and then following those curiosities. Jonathon is the former director of the Kauaʻi Teacher Fellowship, a poet, essayist, and also writes frequently about education, equity, social justice and the power of curiosity. 

Almost two years ago Jonathon began thinking about how he might give his young learners opportunities to think about becoming a teacher without pushing them into pathway decisions too early. More than anything he wanted his kids to think about both the practice of teaching and the ways teaching in and of itself can be an act of social justice. To that end he began holding periodic meetings during lunch periods and after school with students who had joined his FTHC. They held seminar sessions on topics in education. They set up Zoom calls with educators on the other Hawaiian Islands to explore ways these educators were pushing envelopes and challenging conventions. And, when the pandemic receded, they went on field trips to see social justice education in action. 

When the Hanahau‘oli PDC announced it was going to give out an award for social justice teaching I immediately suggested to the Center’s Director, Amber Makaiau, that I feature the awardee on my What School Could Be Podcast. Long story short, the PDC awarded two educators instead of one and I featured both as part of my 112th episode. (The other was Natalie Lalagos, another brilliant educator and social justice advocate.) Imagine my delight when I found out that Jonathon Medeiros, who had been my guest on a much earlier episode, had been recognized for his work in founding the Kauaʻi High School’s FTHC. Imagine also what I felt when I found out that Jonathon planned to fly a group of his FTHC members over to O‘ahu, my island, for a curiosity and inquiry adventure into teaching and learning with his cash award. In the moment, a number of ideas vectored and thus was born the epic “lei of Aloha” FTHC retreat on O‘ahu’s North Shore, which I will now briefly describe. 

Before I do so, allow me to share one other thing that has been rolling around in my head for the past year. The number of total podcasts in the world now sits at roughly 3.2 million. Of that figure, the number of education related podcasts is growing fast. To my knowledge, there are few of these education podcasts that do much with their guests beyond the release date. One and done, we might say. I have been working for a year now to take a different approach, which is to be intentional about bringing former guests into specific professional development situations where their creativity, imagination and innovation becomes practical and useful. The object is to explore the outer edges with my former guests, to question, What could school be and what could be school? so that educator listeners can know how as much as why. Such was the case with Jonathon Medeiros when I learned he planned to bring his FTHC students to O‘ahu. And the idea of engaging former guests only grew from there. 

Back to Jonathon’s idea to bring his students to O‘ahu. As soon as I found out I contacted him and offered a partnership with What School Could Be to create a half-day retreat, the object being to place a “lei of Aloha” around his kids and immerse them in a program that would both inspire and clarify what it means to teach. Jonathon enthusiastically agreed and we began planning. Again, long story short, I asked a long time friend, recently retired Hawai‘i State Supreme Court Justice, Mike Wilson if we could hold this retreat at his North Shore beach house. Once he agreed Jonathon and I were off to the races. Over the next two months we roughed out a multi-module plan for the morning. Jonathon and his wife, Erin (another former guest on my show) would fly the kids over early on a Thursday, rent a couple vans, drive to Justice Wilson’s Kawela Bay home and we would immerse the kids in four hours of what education could be. (After which Jonathon, Erin and the kids would drive to Honolulu to get a guided tour and “curation experience” at the Honolulu Museum of Art with Amber Makaiau.) 

A quick word about who else supported this half-day retreat. Besides Jonathon and his wife, Erin, I gathered up four other, previous podcast guests (everyone said yes immediately, a good sign we were on the right track), including HIDOE Philosopher in Residence and University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa professor, Chad Miller; Daniel K. Inouye Elementary School educator and VP (and Milken Award winner), Esther Kwon; Kamehameha Schools Senior Strategist and long time educator, Evan Beachy; and SEEQS founder and long time educator, Buffy Cushman-Patz. Into the mix we added What School Could Be’s Executive Director, Kapono Ciotti, and its Director of Community Engagement, Mel Ching. And, of course, we included Justice Wilson, who had also once been Hawaii’s Director of Land and Natural Resources and is an incredible climate change warrior. All told, this was a powerhouse group of folks all living and working on the cutting edge of what school and learning could be. 

So what happened during our four hours together, just yards from the beach and one of the most beautiful marine sanctuaries on Planet Earth? First of all, Jonathon and I decided in advance that we would employ Philosophy for Children (p4c) as our overall protocol for the morning, which “is a wonderful way of bringing teachers and children together to discuss things that matter.” Chad Miller, an expert in p4c led us through the creation of a p4c “community ball,” which uses yarn woven into a ball while being passed around a circle to create a safe space to allow one’s voice to emerge and to get to know others in the circle. Then Esther Kwon, continuing to use p4c, guided everyone through an exploration of what it means to build caring and connected communities at schools. Next, Buffy Cushman-Patz used p4c and her own experiences founding the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability (SEEQS - an innovative public charter school in Honolulu, Hawai‘i serving students in grades 6-8 since 2013) to help all of us, educators and high school students alike, to understand not only what school could be, but what it takes to build a school from scratch. After that, Evan Beachy and Kapono Ciotti, using more p4c, challenged our Kaua‘i High School FTHC members to think and talk about how the world becomes what we teach, which is a concept deeply rooted in social justice and equity. And finally, we turned it over to retired Supreme Court Justice, Mike Wilson, who seized the moment and delivered a passionate, short treatise on the huge challenges our world faces and how teachers will lead the way towards a more just and verdant future. Along this remarkable journey of discovery and reflection, Jonathon and Erin kept grounding us in the notion that there is something truly special and socially just about “coming back” to teach in one’s home community. We closed with an on-screen demonstration of all the resources at WhatSchoolCouldBe.org and an epic giving of gifts to the nine students, including ribbon-wrapped copies of What School Could Be, The World Becomes What We Teach and Educating With Aloha.

The What School Could Be team talks a lot about building caring and connected communities. It is one of our five themes, or pillars of the work reimagining education. Embedded in these conversations is the deep seated idea of social justice, that everyone – every child, every learner – should have the opportunity to to be part of a safe space where curiosity and wonder can flourish. I think it is safe to say that, with the help of six remarkable former podcast guests, our nine potential future teachers of Hawai‘i, over four p4c hours, felt like they belonged and their voices mattered even if in the end they choose to pursue other professions. As Justice Wilson so eloquently put it, we are all participants in and facilitators of the lives we lead. Social justice is a human construction – let us do the joyous work together. 

One last thing. After we expressed our final thoughts and the gifts were given we gathered on the beach in front of Justice Wilson’s Kawela Bay home to take group photos. As we positioned ourselves, shorter folk in the front, taller folk in the back, a huge endangered green sea turtle (honu, in Hawaiian) swam up to the sand’s edge and hauled itself into the bright, noontime sun. We were all stunned, frankly, that the gods would bless our time together with such a convergence of earth, sky, sand, sea and Mother Nature. We took it as a sign that what we had just accomplished was only the beginning of one shared future and the building of generations of good ancestors. 

I want to express my deep gratitude to Amber Makaiau at the Hanahau‘oli Professional Development Center for the opportunity to recount the events of September 7th, 2023 here in this blog. My hope is that educators reading my words will be inspired by the work of Jonathon Medeiros and Natalie Lalagos and will seek to develop their own ways of incorporating elements of social justice (and p4c) into their pedagogical practices. Who benefits from this? Our kids do. They deserve the opportunity to be heard and to act on their own interests as they traverse this thing we call “school.”