He lālā au no ku‘u kumu. “I am a branch sprouting from the tree that is my teacher, my source, my foundation” sing children in a Hawaiian medium - laboratory school of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikolani (College of Hawaiian Language) of the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo (‘Aha Pūnana Leo, 1989).2 What follows is a description of our efforts to develop structures providing teachers to revitalize our home islands’ indigenous language over the past twenty-five years. I kumu; I lālā “that there be opportunities for foundations and growth” is our hope for all advocates for endangered language survival who seek contemporary schools for their children based in their own languages and cultures.

As described in Wilson (1998a, 1998b) and Wilson & Kamanā (2001), the Polynesian Hawaiian language was once the sole medium of education of the Hawai‘i public school system. The overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy and annexation of Hawai‘i by the United States was accompanied by a ban on Hawaiian as the medium of education that lasted ninety years. From a low point in the early 1980s when there were less than 50 children speakers, use of Hawaiian has since increased dramatically as part of a movement to revitalize Hawaiian using Hawaiian language medium schools called Pūnana Leo at the preschool level and Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i at the K-12 level.

Providing teachers for Hawaiian medium education has been a major challenge. Both authors of this article have been politically active on behalf of Hawaiian medium education since its inception and their children are among the first graduates of the system. This article focuses primarily on the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo where we work with others to train teachers through the Kahuawaiola Indigenous Teacher Education Program as part of a larger developing system for Hawaiian language revitalization.

Revitalization and Teachers as Products of Full Systems

A teacher is the product of a full educational system that includes that teacher’s home environment, community upbringing, K-12 education, experiences outside the community, higher education and finally the teacher education specific course work. If the endangered language were already the medium of such educational structures, there would be no need for language revitalization.

While Fishman (1991) has focused on the home as the crucial structure in reestablishing a living language system, we, like the Navajo (Holm & Holm, 1995), have found that contemporary children who speak Hawaiian in the home and who then enter state compulsory education through English lose Hawaiian. Our College has thus focused initial Hawaiian language revitalization on developing Hawaiian medium educational structures and systems that can develop, protect, nurture and enrich young adult and child fluency in Hawaiian along with the crucial disposition to use Hawaiian with Hawaiian speaking peers. These structures and systems are what our Ke Kumu Honua Mauli Ola Philosophy calls honua; that is places, circumstances, structures where use of Hawaiian is dominant. Such honua are seen as crucial components that must be consciously maintained for survival of the Hawaiian mauli or life force (Silva 2000). For an endangered language where there are so few speakers, the establishment of honua is crucial in protecting, developing and expanding the community of speakers.

Structures Versus Methodology

Hawai‘i lost the honua of Hawaiian medium public education as the result of militarily enforced political change in the 1890s. It then took more than two decades to institutionalize the teaching of Hawaiian as a foreign language into English medium higher education and English medium K-12 education. Over eighty years of teaching Hawaiian as a second/foreign language in English medium educational structures have shown that Hawaiian cannot be revitalized in that way. The life of a language exists in the system of structures, not in the instruction of content. Second language teaching of an Indigenous language must be connected to language revitalization structures and systems if they are to do more than simply give Indigenous students a slight glimpse of their ancestral tongues.

Structures create identity and the interaction of human beings as part of a social group; content is for the individual, is measured individually, and is often forgotten. In the United States, students and teachers of foreign languages as content do not typically use those foreign languages as the primary language in their participation in the broader structure of schools, much less in the community. It is the broader structure of the educational community that sets the language and identity of a school. The difference between teaching Hawaiian, or even teaching Hawaiian teachers, and establishing Hawaiian medium structures for teaching Hawaiian and teaching teachers lies at the core of our efforts.

Foreign Language Immersion and Bilingual Education

There are many methodologies of foreign language teaching; among them is a form widely known as immersion (Baker & Jones, 1998). The well-known Canadian model of immersion is radically distinct from our Hawaiian medium model in its approach to the linguistic identity of participating children. While French immersion seeks to maintain an English linguistic identity with French seen as a tool for use in a broader life, our model seeks to transition the linguistic identity of children from English to Hawaiian with English recast as a tool for interaction with the broader world. In many ways, foreign language immersion on the Canadian model is simply applying to children already from the dominant language group, transitional bilingual education methodologies designed to assimilate children from language minorities into the dominant language group. Like transitional bilingual education, foreign language immersion education provides dominance in the politically recognized dominant language, with a relatively high, but secondary, command of another language.

The indigenous immersion model aims for Hawaiian dominance upon graduation from high school—a difficult task within the context of the many English structures outside school. This Hawaiian dominance is to be accompanied by English fluency equivalent to that of monolingual English peers—a relatively easy task in a society containing many monolingual English peers (Wilson & Kamanā, 2006). Furthermore, we seek to produce students who, in spite of their bilingualism and in spite of growing up in an English speaking home and participating in English medium structures in the greater community, psychologically identify Hawaiian as their dominant language and the one that they will speak with peers and their own children when they have them.

With the above goals for students, we at Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani are not seeking to develop transitional bilingual programs or foreign language immersion programs in English medium schools or teacher education programs that produce teachers for bilingual education or foreign language immersion models. Instead, we seek to develop fully Hawaiian medium educational structures that can serve both first language speakers of Hawaiian and those transitioning into dominance in Hawaiian.

Political Recognition as an Official Language of Education

Government supported structures operated through a minority language are most easily developed when such a minority language is politically recognized by a government. Hawaiian has special legal status both in state and federal law (Arnold, 2001; Wilson, 1998b). Hawaiian medium schools are developing parallel to Canadian French medium schools as a distinct structure that exists for the Francophone minority in Canada. The French medium school system in Canada is designed structurally to maintain French as part of a larger system supporting the legally recognized right to use French in those areas of Canada in which Francophones live. Like Hawaiian medium schools in Hawai‘i, Francophone schools in Canada support the maintenance of a distinctive Canadian minority culture and language legally equal to the English language and culture numerically dominant in Canada.

Within the United States, programs for Native American languages are typically part of English medium systems using transitional bilingual, foreign language course, or foreign language immersion methodologies. Hawai‘i contains programs of the above sorts, but it is distinctive in also being the home of small Hawaiian medium educational structures and substructures. The first contemporary Hawaiian medium educational structure to develop in Hawai‘i was that of the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, Inc. This non-profit, established in 1983, runs its entire operations, including its administration, internal business and eleven (11) preschools statewide exclusively through Hawaiian. Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College is another fully Hawaiian medium structure. It is internally self- governed through Hawaiian, and conducts its curriculum support offices and PreK-12 laboratory schools (in partnership with the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo) through Hawaiian. The college also runs all of its upper division courses and post baccalaureate programs through Hawaiian.

The College’s three K-12 laboratory schools are included in the state’s Hawaiian Language Immersion Program or Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i. Also included are one other K-12 stand alone full Hawaiian medium school, ten (10) full Hawaiian medium elementary programs located on English medium elementary school sites, four (4) partial Hawaiian medium programs within English medium intermediate and high schools, and one stand alone K-12 partial immersion program. Different models of governance are used in these sites including charters. The total enrollment in this system of Punana Leo and Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i and schools is approximately 2,000 annually.

The Challenge of Developing Fluency and Use

When revitalizing an endangered language one cannot simply create an independent education structure and then wave a magic wand to infuse it with the endangered language as its medium of operation. One must somehow populate that structure with individuals using the language. It is a formidable task to produce individuals who know the language, who can operate the structure through the language, and who have the psychological strength to use and expand the language under difficult circumstances.

Where Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College is highly distinctive is in the two components of developing student fluency in Hawaiian and then moving them through the psychological and experiential barriers toward full use of Hawaiian as their language of daily interaction. These two components and the teaching style modeled in the College are the most important features of the teacher training program of the College; without them, the program would be one of second language teacher education rather than language revitalization education. While the methodology used in the College resembles immersion, it differs from it in two ways: by focusing on changing the linguistic identity of its students, and in creating a very high level of formal knowledge of the structure of Hawaiian.

Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikolani grew out of the Hawaiian language section of the Foreign Language Department of the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo in the late 1970s as part of an effort to develop a Hawaiian Studies degree at the campus. The vision driving the development of the degree was to produce graduates sufficiently fluent in Hawaiian to live their lives through the language. In order to support that vision, a B.A. program that provides intensive direct instruction of grammar and culture with a focus on building a conscious understanding of the Hawaiian worldview was established.

At 43 credits, and an additional 28 hours of class language study, the Hawaiian Studies B.A. program of the College is the most rigorous language program in the University of Hawai‘i system. The program is conducted entirely through Hawaiian after the first year for both language skill courses and content courses, which include performing arts, literature, linguistics, and anthropology. Students first experience sole use of Hawaiian when they enter the second year course. By the third year, they are expected to use only Hawaiian among themselves. By the fourth year, students are expected to take leadership roles in moving lower level students to full use of Hawaiian.

A key feature of the program is the structured development of use of Hawaiian by students outside the classroom as a language of peer interaction. A faculty model addresses this goal through use of Hawaiian as their sole language of interaction among themselves and with students both on and off campus. Furthermore, all administration within the program is through a department operated through the medium of Hawaiian by individuals who used Hawaiian at all times outside as well as inside the university.

Political Action for New Structures

University and other structures that provide for Hawaiian language revitalization must be deliberately created and entail developing new policies relative to hiring, administration, funding, and other areas. They also require political changes, not only within the university itself but external to the university, to allow for change within the institution. Since the 1970s, what would later become the faculty of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani had been working with university, local, state and federal governing bodies to change laws and policies to promote the survival of the Hawaiian language. From the local county street naming policy to federal Native American language education law, these legal changes interact in moving public and private life toward structures that allow Hawaiian to survive in contemporary times.

A crucial step for us was recognition of Hawaiian as an official language in the state constitution in 1978. This allowed us to develop Hawaiian medium structures parallel to those of English. The mere existence of a law, however, does not result in the establishment of Hawaiian medium structures; they must be built from the ground up. Our greatest challenge has been in establishing K-12 Hawaiian medium education within the constraints of a state driven English medium public education system. No other state has an educational system taught through the medium of a language other than English upon which we could build the model. The state first saw the Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i as a form of bilingual education, then as a special foreign language program using the immersion method to teach the content area of Hawaiian language and culture. Most recently, it has begun to move toward the Hawaiian medium structure viewpoint.

The Department of Education understanding of the Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i has major implications for teacher education. Viewing the Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i as bilingual education or foreign language immersion in an English language structure implies that mainstream English medium teacher education programs could address Hawaiian medium education needs. The English medium teacher education programs within the state all include some component that incorporates multicultural education, examines bilingual education and discusses issues of linguistic diversity. All elementary and secondary teachers thus have some exposure to the concept of languages other than English in the classroom. At the secondary level, the state also provides a license for teaching foreign languages, which is applied to Hawaiian language teaching in high schools. The first two Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i teachers came out of the English medium teacher education structure. One was trained as a high school foreign language teacher; the other, the parent of Pūnana Leo children, was trained as an English medium elementary teacher.

Working with the Education Department of the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, our faculty was able to affect some changes in standard teacher education for the Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i—primarily provisions allowing student teaching through Hawaiian when Hawaiian Studies provided translation assistance to Education Department evaluators of student teachers. We knew, however, that we needed a separate teacher education program in the medium of Hawaiian itself if we were to be successful in our quest to establish a structure that would revitalize Hawaiian and not treat it as an aspect of ethnic diversity or specialized content in an English medium structure.

Hawaiian Medium College Focusing on Developing Teachers

After nearly two decades of relatively small changes, proponents of Hawaiian language survival associated with the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo persuaded the state legislature to pass a bill creating a Hawaiian language college out of the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo Hawaiian Studies Department. The college, named Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani, was to provide a structure for Hawaiian medium education from preschool through graduate school along with support offices. A mandate that it includes a Hawaiian medium laboratory school program and preservice teacher education program resulted in the Kahuawaiola Indigenous Teacher Education Program described later below.

Previous to the 1997 legislative mandate for the creation of the College, the Hawaiian Studies Department had existed as a cross between a foreign language program and an area studies program within the Humanities Division of the College of Arts and Sciences. After reorganization, the program became a self- governing unit of the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, which technically could offer courses and indeed degrees through Hawaiian in any field, but which was to focus on developing Hawaiian medium teachers. The reorganization also allowed the College to further strengthen its ties to the nonprofit ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, Inc.

A prototype of the college had already been developed in association with the Hawaiian Studies Department at UH-Hilo with help from the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo. These associated entities were incorporated along with the Department into the College. They included the Hale Kuamo’o Hawaiian Language Center and the preschool to grade 12 Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u Hawaiian language medium school site owned by the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo and staffed primarily by the state Department of Education. Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u was designated as the primary site for the College’s laboratory school program. Support for this laboratory school program has since been extended to two much smaller Hawaiian medium schools on other islands.

Steps toward Establishing the Kahuawaiola Program

Efforts to develop a distinctive Hawaiian medium teacher education program in Hilo reached a crossroads in 1994 when the lead Hawaiian immersion class in Hilo was faced with a facilities dilemma of where to continue the program after completion of grade six. With facilities support from the ‘Aha Punana Leo and the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Hawaiian Studies faculty member Kauanoe Kamanā took a leave to spearhead and teach at the secondary school site. This total Hawaiian medium setting and the experimental Hawaiian Studies education courses taught to college students at the site laid a basis for the program’s future Hawaiian medium teaching certificate and laboratory school program. That same year, the UH-Hilo Hawaiian Studies Department created a long-range strategic plan that proposed a separate Hawaiian medium teacher education program under the Hawaiian Studies Department rather than under the Education Department.

In 1997, the ‘Aha Punana Leo funded Keiki Kawai‘ae‘a to lead in the creation and documentation of the Ke Kumu Honua Mauli Ola philosophy, a set of guiding principles that has supported the vision and aligned the direction of the Pūnana Leo, Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani, and the Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i schools (Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani, & ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, in press). The following year a special statewide committee completed the document written solely in Hawaiian and based in Hawaiian traditional teachings.

The 1997 mandate from the legislature to establish the College was followed by the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo obtaining funds through the federal Native Hawaiian Education Act to develop a Hawaiian medium education program within the College. Keiki Kawai‘ae‘a began planning the program in cooperation with the Hawai‘i State Department of Education and with support from William Wilson as the Hawaiian Studies Department Chair. Named the Kahuawaiola Indigenous Teacher Education Program, the resulting post-baccalaureate program was piloted in 1999 and officially accredited in 2001.

To accompany the philosophical document Ke Kumu Honua Mauli Ola, a set of guidelines called Nā Honua Mauli Ola Hawai‘i Guidelines For Culturally Healthy and Responsive Learning Environments was created in 2002 (Native Hawaiian Education Council, & Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani, 2002). Modeling them on the Alaska Standards for Culturally Responsive Schools (Alaska Native Knowledge Network, 1998), Kawai‘ae‘a chaired their development in partnership with the Native Hawaiian Education Council and Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani. Many Native Hawaiian serving organizations, programs, schools and others have endorsed the document and are utilizing it in a variety of educational applications including school, program and curriculum development, and teacher education. The State Department of Education is using the cultural guidelines to clarify expectations in a wide variety of Hawaiian programs.

A milestone in the development of Kahuawaiola was the establishment of three new Hawaiian content licenses by the State Department of Education. These new licenses are aligned to the Nā Honua Mauli Ola guidelines and include a K-12 Hawaiian Immersion license and, at the secondary level, a Hawaiian Language license (for foreign language departments) and a Hawaiian Studies license (for social studies departments). In collaboration with the State Approval of Teacher Education (SATE) task force committee through the Hawai‘i State Department of Education, Keiki Kawai‘ae‘a lead the development of standards for the three Hawaiian teaching licenses.

The authority for accreditation of teacher education programs and teacher licensing was transferred from the Hawai‘i State Department of Education to the Hawai‘i Teacher Standards Board in 2002. The SATE Reference and Reporting Guide was approved the following year with the incorporation of state and national standards for teacher performance and licensing. Included under the areas of special emphasis section are three of the Nā Honua Mauli Ola Guidelines required for all teacher education programs in the state (Hawai‘i Teachers Standards Board, 2006).

Features of the Kahuawaiola Teacher Education Program

The Kahuawaiola Program is designed to prepare teachers for 1) Hawaiian language medium schools, 2) Hawaiian language and culture programs in English medium schools and, 3) schools serving students with strong Hawaiian cultural backgrounds. Teacher candidates may also qualify for other elementary and secondary licenses contingent on their undergraduate content area and student teaching experiences.

Kahuawaiola was developed around three traditional Hawaiian beliefs: Ma ka hana ka ‘ike (Knowledge comes from direct experience), Ma mua ka hana, ma hope ka wala‘au (Direct experience comes first, discussion comes second), ‘O ke kahua ma mua, ma hope ke kūkulu (The foundation first, and then the building—learn all you can then practice). Academics are infused into a holistic culture-based program with an emphasis on hands-on experience and performance in a variety of learning environments and situations that support the development of wellness and well-being as an educational goal.

Teacher candidates develop learning, teaching, leading, and reflection skills through native practices, approaches, paradigms and processes grounded in the Hawaiian language and culture. The Ke Kumu Honua Mauli Ola philosophy and Nā Honua Mauli Ola guidelines serve as the conceptual framework and cultural guidelines of the program. Keiki Kawai‘ae‘a developed and coordinated professional networks to allow courses to be taught through Hawaiian by Hawaiian Studies faculty with many special lectures and input from a wide range of experts in specific areas of education. She developed the program to run on a cohort basis for three semesters with a full year of student teaching. Kahuawaiola strengthens its program accountability through an advisory board of prominent researchers in minority and Native American education.

Entrance and Exit Requirements for Teacher Education

The Kahuawaiola Program was designed to prepare all of its graduates to qualify for at least two licenses, and is the first program to be accredited for multiple licensures in the state of Hawai‘i. All graduates qualify to receive the K-12 Hawaiian immersion license along with an additional license based on their specific bachelor degrees, teaching level experience and PRAXIS examination. Therefore, candidates training at the elementary level or secondary level of their baccalaureate major degree areas may also qualify for related licenses for English medium schools. Students earning the UH-Hilo Hawaiian Studies B.A. are also recommended for secondary Hawaiian language and Hawaiian Studies licenses to teach in English medium schools. These additional licenses open up multiple employment opportunities, thus serving as an incentive and employment protection from the state for students pursing the rigorous language requirements of Kahuawaiola.

Entrance requirements to Kahuawaiola are strict. All candidates must have had eight full semesters of Hawaiian language plus additional courses in Hawaiian culture as well as have completed a baccalaureate major in an area recognized by the State for public school teaching. Other entrance requirements include 50 to 75 hours of previous paid or volunteer experience in Hawaiian medium education and sufficient scores on relevant PRAXIS examinations at levels established by the Hawai‘i Teacher Standards Board.

A unique feature of the program is that students must pass a rigorous Hawaiian language fluency examination developed in consultation with Dr. Charles Standsfield of the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington D.C. Demonstration of five skills is required in the examination. First among them is oral fluency at the ACTFL “Advanced” level or above (American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages, 1983). The “Advanced” level was chosen to meet the same standard of second language oral fluency required by nonnative speakers of English who teach in public schools through English.

The oral examination is the examination that students find the easiest, perhaps because of long use of Hawaiian in and outside of the classroom. Additional skill areas that Kahuawaiola Teacher Education Program candidates must pass include a transcription of elders speaking about cultural topics and answering questions about the content of that audio-taped speech; reformatting nineteenth century Hawaiian written materials in contemporary orthography and answering questions on those materials; and writing an essay in Hawaiian on a contemporary topic. The fifth skill, and most difficult, is translating a contemporary newspaper article from English to Hawaiian in an idiomatic way and from a Hawaiian cultural perspective. This is a skill important for teachers developing classroom curriculum and supplemental materials in a language with an educational materials resource base thousands of times smaller than that of English.

The Three Semester Teacher Education Program Itself

Kahuawaiola training begins with an intensive immersion training period at the PreK-12 Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u laboratory school site. During this summer semester, students stay in a laboratory school dormitory and live their lives entirely in Hawaiian with extensive use of the cultural gardens and animals that are a part of the school. The nearly six-week experience includes a set of courses that provide a foundation for teaching across the curriculum. Included in the course content is research on foreign language, bilingual, and immersion education that forms the basis of discussion on distinct features and challenges to Hawaiian medium education. The program also draws on research in culture-based education and the specialty backgrounds of a diverse and skilled faculty.

Along with its strong component in traditional lifestyles, the Kahuawaiola program emphasizes the use of Hawaiian language and culture as the basis for all facets of contemporary life. The focus of the Kumu Honua Mauli Ola philosophy is symbolism, relationship, and human interaction, not material culture. Teacher candidates are taught that it is connections, interaction of relationships and symbolism that make something Hawaiian.

After completing their live-in training, students proceed to a full year of student teaching. During this time, they work with master teachers in the Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i schools statewide and remain connected by participating in weekly seminars and special workshops in educational theory and issues provided through distance education. When possible, teacher candidates are placed at a laboratory school site of the College.

Throughout the Kahuawaiola program the Ke Kumu Honua Mauli Ola educational philosophy is integrated with a modified version of the 4MAT methodology in preparing teachers for the classroom. The 4MAT program developed by Dr. Bernice McCarthy (http://www.aboutlearning.com) provides a means to bridge traditional Native Hawaiian approaches in a natural and systematic cycle based on contemporary research on learning styles and brain research. The organization of 4MAT is represented visually in the form of a wheel that meshes well with the piko (three points of personal connection) and ‘ao‘ao (four aspects of identity) approach of Ke Kumu Honua Mauli Ola.

The goals of the Ke Kumu Honua Mauli Ola are made further explicit through the standards established in the Nā Honua Mauli Ola guidelines described earlier. As part of their training, teachers must develop lesson plans that address the Hawaiian standards as well as the state content and performance standards used for English medium education.

Current Trends in Hawaiian Medium Education

The development of the Pūnana Leo and the Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i has raised the bar in Hawaiian culture and language standards. The distinctive identity of the Hawaiian people and Hawai‘i itself makes speaking Hawaiian and participating in Hawaiian culture positive features for students in all schools. The number of English medium schools offering Hawaiian has grown, as have enrollments in Hawaiian classes. Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i education has also affected expectations of what all students should know and participate in relative to Hawaiian language and culture.

In the late 1990s, English medium Hawaiian culture-based charter schools were established. These were followed by Hawaiian culture-based components in teaching content in standard public and private English medium schools. Most recently, there has been movement in some schools for minimum graduation requirements in terms of Hawaiian language and culture knowledge.

There is some concern in the Hawaiian language revitalization community regarding negative effects on Hawaiian medium education due to increased opportunities for Hawaiian culture and language learning in English medium schools. The history of our movement, and other language revitalization movements in Wales, Spain and New Zealand, provide evidence that even daily classes in endangered languages from kindergarten through high school do not result in revitalization of such languages when the structure of the school is through the dominant language (Wilson & Kamanā, 2006). Second, other schools are developing their Hawaiian language and culture through English programs in part through the recruitment of students and teachers from the Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i, some using resources at their disposal way beyond those available to the Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i. The loss of the highest performing students and highly qualified teachers to other schools reduces the overall performance profile of Hawaiian medium school sites in terms of academics, culture, athletics, and other areas. Enrollment consequences from intense direct recruitment and potential negative public response to lowered achievement and socioeconomic profiles of Hawaiian medium schools threaten the very existence of some Hawaiian medium school sites.

An additional impact is on the students who leave. Outside a Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i, Hawaiian fluency is highly unlikely to be further developed to the level it would have been in such a school. Fluency is likely to regress or even disappear depending on the age at which students leave. The challenge for the College is to encourage other schools, especially elite private schools, to focus with the College on actual revitalization of Hawaiian and coordinate their efforts with Kula Kaiapuni Hawai‘i. Kahuawaiola trained teachers in the private schools will have an important role as advocates for educational restructuring in support of preserving and expanding Hawaiian medium education.

An area that is beginning to receive special attention in Hawaiian medium education are children who enter the Pūnana Leo as first language speakers of Hawaiian deliberately developed by college-educated parents dedicated to Hawaiian language revitalization. This small but growing population will further strengthen use of Hawaiian by all students in Hawaiian medium schools and requires a new direction in curriculum and programming. The ‘Aha Pūnana Leo has begun a Hawaiian medium infant-toddler program called Hi‘i Pēpē to support and strengthen this new population.

Special attention is also being given to the Ni‘ihau community. Long the sole community using Hawaiian as its daily language, the Ni‘ihau community is now moving increasingly to the neighboring island of Kaua’i. There its language and distinct identity are greatly threatened and its long isolation from high school and college education has put it under great economic stress. About one third of all Ni‘ihau children on Kaua‘i are enrolled in the Ke Kula Ni‘ihau O Kekaha laboratory school where they are taught through Hawaiian and members of their community are learning to become teachers under a special program at the College. This laboratory school is having relatively good results in terms of maintaining Hawaiian for that portion of the Ni‘ihau community enrolled in its program and keeping those children in school until graduation.

New Directions for Teacher Education at the College

As the Kahuawaiola Indigenous Teacher Education Program is stabilizing in its service to K-12 programs, it is moving to strengthen Pūnana Leo preschool education and expanding graduate education. The College is currently developing a specialized preschool/early elementary education track within Kahuawaiola to upgrade teaching in Pūnana Leo preschools. With the passing of the elders who were most familiar with Hawaiian traditions of education outside Anglo-American institutions, there is a need for more formal teaching of much of their worldview and knowledge and integrating that with new developments in Hawaiian medium elementary education. The focus of this new certificate will be early language and cultural identity development and early introduction of literacy designed to facilitate multilingual expansion.

Integration of teacher preparation with graduate education is another area of growth. Kahuawaiola developed simultaneously with the M.A. in Hawaiian Language and Literature, a Hawaiian medium graduate program that focuses in large part on the history and literary products of Hawai‘i’s Hawaiian medium education system of the nineteenth century. Several students of the Kahuawaiola Program have been simultaneously enrolled in this master’s degree program. Dual enrollment in Kahuawaiola and the M.A. is seen as a means for preparing future faculty for the College. Indeed, since the establishment of the College all new faculty are expected to teach over the broad range of levels, from preschool through graduate school, which exists within the structure of the College.

A new Ph.D. in Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization enrolled its first students in the fall of 2006. Among the new feeder programs for the Ph.D. is a new M.A. in Indigenous Language and Culture Education. The inclusion of national and Indigenous experts in these programs is broadening the base of knowledge and perspectives of students from Hawai‘i and also allowing us to share more with those outside Hawai‘i. The new M.A. is providing the next layer of professional development for the Kahuawaiola Indigenous Teacher Education candidates.

National and International Cooperation

Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani (College of Hawaiian Language) faculty have been very active on a national and international level in the development of models and institutions to nurture the survival of indigenous languages and cultures while providing high quality educational programs. As described in Arnold (2001), faculty members of the College were active in the development and passage of the Native American Languages Act of 1990. This Act provides policy and direction for educational initiatives through Native American languages throughout the United States.

Work with Dr. William Demmert (Tlingit/Lakota), a founding member of the National Indian Education Association, has expanded federal policy support for Native American language medium education and addressing its unique challenges, by building on parallels with Puerto Rico’s Spanish medium education system. Currently the College and the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo are working with Dr. Demmert and the Northwest Educational Laboratory in research at the Nāwahīokalani‘opu‘u laboratory school site to verify that Native American language medium education is a valid alternative pathway to the level of academic excellence sought under the No Child Left Behind Act (Demmert & Towner, 2003). Dr. Demmert has also piloted courses for the new Ph.D. and M.A.

Indigenous language medium/immersion schools have been established in a number of Native American languages in the last decade and there is interest in establishing similar programs for other languages (Aguilera & LeCompte, 2007 [this issue]; Hermes, 2000. The partnership of Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani and the ‘Aha Pūnana Leo, Inc. have served as a national model and a visitation site for Indigenous groups conducting and exploring education through Indigenous languages (Pease-Pretty On Top, 2003). The ability to host the increased number of Indigenous visitors has been strengthened through funding from the Lannan, Ford, and Kellogg Foundations.

In connecting with those who come to visit the consortium, it is important to stress that although Hawaiian language revitalization seems large and well developed, it began quite small and includes small and compact multi-grade P-12 laboratory school programs (Aguilera & LeCompte, 2007 [this issue]). The College’s Hawaiian Studies Department was itself originally quite small, offering its B.A. program with only three tenure track faculty positions and one lecturer. These four staff members all also worked intensely in community language and culture revitalization. A preschool through B.A. system of the sort that developed with this small group of individuals would not seem to be outside the capability of Tribal Colleges and other universities and colleges located in indigenous areas. College enrollments in Native American languages are now following a pattern of rapid increases similar to that experienced in Hawai‘i in the 1970s suggesting that other Native American groups are increasingly using tertiary education to revitalize their languages (Welles, 2004).

In moving past the crucial P-16 level (preschool to B.A.), Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani is increasingly making contact with other Indigenous teacher education programs and Indigenous higher education efforts at the graduate level. These connections are expanding the College’s efforts on behalf of Hawaiian language medium education as a basic human rights issue to include research into its effectiveness as a pedagogical approach. The Kahuawaiola Program is currently part of a national three-year study looking at the integration of Indigenous languages, cultures and values in developing culturally congruent ways for teacher preparation. The study conducted by the Center for Indian Education at Arizona State University focuses on the use and benefits of Indigenous language and culture in teacher preparation programs for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian teacher preparation programs.

The College is also currently developing partnerships to network with other tertiary institutions conducting Indigenous teacher education programs. Using video conferencing and other multimedia formats, new courses have been delivered by combining expertise of Indigenous educators and joining graduate students nationally and potentially internationally.

The World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) is another vehicle for cooperation. The College supports the efforts of WINHEC in the development and implementation of an international Indigenous accreditation process. Keiki Kawai‘ae‘a joined the WINHEC Working Party in developing the accreditation criteria. Participation in WINHEC allows Kahuawaiola and the College and similar entities to seek specialized Indigenous education accreditation in addition to the accreditation from national and state accrediting bodies, such as those the College currently receives from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and from the Hawai‘i State Teacher Standards Board.

Conclusion

The movement to revitalize Hawaiian includes distinctive teacher training that has parallels in Indigenous teacher preparation throughout the world. The development of the Kahuawaiola Indigenous Teacher Education Program at Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College is rooted in our Ke Kumu Honua Mauli Ola philosophy. That philosophy leads us to seek a healthy group mauli (life force) through application of its concepts of honua (places/situations/entities), piko (connections), and ‘ao‘ao (distinctive attributes and features) to our interactions and relationships with places, people, things, and ideas.

Kahuawaiola is part of a holistic approach to developing Hawaiian medium educational structures and policies. The program seeks to develop highly qualified teachers who are proficient in Hawaiian language and culture, native pedagogy and the necessary content knowledge and professional dispositions that nurture the development of well-being and wellness through education.

Closely related to the development of Kahuawaiola are the development of the College’s PreK-12 laboratory school program, the development of three Hawaiian specific teacher licenses, the establishment of Hawaiian-education standards, and the consortium relationship with the nonprofit ‘Aha Punana Leo. The College is building its research base through establishment of graduate education and collaboration with others dedicated to language and culture based education.

There have been many challenges to establishing Indigenous language medium teacher education and many more remain. Progress has definitely been made and we hope that our experiences will be of help to others who are struggling to revitalize their languages. The song with which we opened expresses those feelings as follows: He lālā wau no ku‘u kumu, nāna wau e ko‘o mai. Inā ikaika ka makani, nāna wau e a‘o mai. Luliluli, luliluli, a la‘i mālie hou. “I am a branch of my tree, my teacher who provides me with support. And if the winds are strong, my teacher will be there providing me the direction that I need. Yes, I may twist and turn, but the wind will end and I will find contented peacefulness.”