Charter Schools Are Different

For 13 years I began each day of school at 8 a.m. sharp, typical of many American high school students. But that’s pretty much where the similarities between my high school experience and the high school experience of most Americans end.

This is because I attended to Kanu O ka Aina, a small (small may be an understatement, I graduated with 12 others) charter school on the Big Island (Moku O Keawe) of Hawaii. It specializes in project based and Hawaiian cultural education, their motto is:

Kulia i Ka Nu’u i ka Paepae Kapu o Liloa

Strive to reach your highest level, to the sacred platform of Liloa

Pretty neat motto, right? Now imagine going to school in an environment where one of your biggest tests each day is asking yourself, questions like:

• Have I done all that I can do to the fullest of my abilities? — It does wonders for your work ethic.
• Would I be proud to tell my ancestors about my actions?
• How am I helping my community and others?

Let me begin by confessing that I am not arguing that charter schools are superior to public and private institutions in anyway in this article (maybe they are, maybe not). However, I am arguing that there is an obvious dichotomy between how they approach education.

During the 11 years I attended Kanu, I began each morning by asking (I never considered it praying as I was taught there is a the difference between religion and respect) my ancestors for wisdom and acknowledging all they have already provided for me.

Project Based Learning is Real Learning

After our morning chants, we would dive into “hard skills” like Math, Science, English and Hawaiian Language (We were required to be in a Hawaiian language class for the duration of the student’s enrollment at the school which for me was 11 years).

However, each afternoon we would shift campuses and move our project sites (they were disseminated throughout the western side of the Island). We referred to this “project time” and this is when we applied our “hard skills”, the concepts we had learned a priori during the morning to solve real problems.

Project-based learning is very different from the public education system’s definition of “learning”. Having been in both a charter school and for a short time in public school I can only begin to explain the difference as being comparable to sitting in the passengers seat and watching someone drive (public) versus sitting in the passengers seat and driving yourself (charter). Instead of learning by sifting through endless pages of a textbook we were expected demonstrate our learning through application.