He Waʻa He Moku He Moku He Waʻa

Abstract

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDIvxZdM2Og&t=4s 

The short film He Waʻa He Moku He Moku He Waʻa was produced in a partnership with the Polynesian Voyaging Society, The Nature Conservancy and Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and World Heritage Site. The goal of this film is to help introduce waʻa (canoe) values, to students and teachers in Hawaiʻi and across the Pacific. These values, essential to open-ocean voyaging, translate well to ways we should live on our islands, and on this planet. The title, translated in English, means: The Canoe is an Island and the Island is a Canoe.

He Waʻa He Moku He Moku He Waʻa serves as a tool to introduce how we can conserve limited resources, care for one another, understand our individual responsibilities and seek knowledge to find our way as a community, on land, and in the ocean. Students and teachers who adopt these values in their classrooms will find that a journey of learning is less dependent on authoritarian rules and regulations, and more reliant on a shared value system that promotes individual and group growth and nurturing.

The film culminates with several schools who have taken these values beyond the walls of their classrooms, and into wild spaces of Hawaiʻi, restoring native habitats in the forests wetlands and coasts near their schools.

As pandemic restrictions lift and schools reopen, social-emotional supports will be vital in establishing trust and commodore among students who have experienced isolation and potential trauma. He Waʻa He Moku He Moku He Waʻa continues to support and enrich the ongoing development of culturally relevant social-emotional learning tools and teacher pedagogy at the University of Guam where culturally relevant social-emotional supports are being built and tested.

"As an educator, it's important to instill a sense of safety, support, and personal responsibility in your students early on. Nurturing classroom settings are cultivated in human values and an understanding that, as a classroom community, we will care for one another along the way. This film was produced to help begin a dialogue about how we can commit to building and sustaining a nurturing classroom, school, community, and world." – Matthew Limtiaco Ed. D, Program Coordinator for the Elementary Education Program at University of Guam School of Education