I work as a
kumu (teacher) in the distance learning branch of a Hawaiian Charter school.
Once a month we get the students together and take them on a field trip. The students are netted from across the entire island.
There are several reasons for the field trips: One of the most important of these is that, because so much of our school life is conducted virtually, field trips offer the students opportunity to socialize and form real relationships in the face to face environment. Online learning can be very lonely, socially isolating and alienating.
We also want to create a sense of connection to place - the island. Our mothership school is all about place based learning, through the lens of Hawaiian culture.
On the field trips we try to continue this culture and place based tradition. We engage with geography (a lot of geology, obviously, being on a volcanic island in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean and because geology is a special passion for one of my colleagues), history and story:
moʻolelo - myths, legends and oral history - specific to that region of the island
There is a big plan: we are circumnavigating the island with these monthly field trips. For logistical purposes, we generally do the same trip twice, with the younger grades first, and the older ones the next day.
We have around 80 students from grade 3 through 12 registered, but only about half of those ever come on the field trips (even though field trips are mandatory). None the less our field trips are usually a big group of wild and unruly young energy with only a few adult stabilizers. It can be a little hard to maintain discipline.
Neither myself nor my colleagues are big on a traditional, military style order and discipline anyway. The nature of our independent study program is that it fosters independence and individuality.
Groups of independent young people on a field trip on wild rock wave washed coastlines is....interesting.
Decemberʻs trip was to Ka Lae or South Point in the Kaʻu region.
This area is desolate and wind blown. A great place for moody, wind distorted, tree photography. Just as it always rains where I live, the wind always blows at South Point.
I have written it up previously
here. This blogger has more details on the area
here
Kaʻu known as the land of the rebels. Story goes that King Kamehamehaʻs warriors were unable to land here when they came to conquer, because sea cucumbers lined the rocks with their slippery bodies making it impossible for the warriors to make landfall.
Thus the Kaʻu tribes were not subjugated. Our students found a Dept of Interior survey peg and were determined to dig it out as a souvenir (the boys, of course). On this occasion I managed a measure of subjugation.
We found a sea cucumber on our explorations and thought about how challenging it would be to try to walk on a massed bed of these creatures.
Two currents meet at this point. The ocean is tumultuous: wild and headstrong, not necessarily friendly. There are stories of harsh chiefs who did not take good care of their people.
It is thought that this is the point that the first canoes from the Marquesas landed.
One of the archaeological features of the area is canoe mooring holes. Fishermen would moor their canoes to the cliffs so that they were not washed out to sea, and lost forever.
Ka Lae, today, is a favourite spot for kite fishermen who cast out from land with the help of a kite to carry their lure further. The local version of a kite is a black garbage bag on the line.
Kalalae Heiau is a small, but extremely well-preserved heiau. This is classified as a
ko’a, or fishing shrine, to the god Ku’ula. The an altar for
hoʻokupa (offerings) overlooks the ocean.
