By Tzana Saldania
Putting a vision into practice requires relentless courage, enduring curiosity, and a desire to improve the lives of others. Similar to the values of our students and alumni, the creation of Mid-Pacific Institute’s Center for Advancing Education was propelled by curiosity, innovation, and community impact.
The Center for Advancing Education (or “The Center” for short) seeks to remove the boundaries of school walls. We understand, now more than ever, the need to meet learners where they are. This need is not limited to where they are physically, but where they are on their academic and personal journeys.
The pandemic amplified systemic and long-standing issues within education, reminding us that life and learning are deeply intertwined. Schools are not places where students come to learn. Schools are places where learners discover their purpose, defining their journey with each lesson, project, and inquiry.
The Center aims to be a global community committed to transforming schools, placing intellectual curiosity and the inquiry process at the center of teaching and learning, and igniting the joy of learning in teachers and students everywhere.
Deeper Learning and place-based learning are a cornerstone of Mid-Pacific Institute’s approach to the Center of Advancing Education. It involves taking skills from our history, place, and personal interests and applying it to skills for the future.
As anchors to The Center, these three branches will allow us to impact education across a multitude of channels and with unique experiences and leaders at the helm.
Deeper Learning is a cornerstone of Mid-Pacific Institute’s approach to The Center. It involves taking experiences from our history, place, and personal interests and applying it to skills for the future.
Like any hub for connection and community, The Center contains academies that carry out our mission to give educators and students, committed to transforming education, the tools and knowledge to apply Deeper Learning principles in classrooms, careers, and communities around the world.
These academies include Kupu Hou Academy and the Global Exchange Academy. Our future plans also include a Research Schools Academy division to The Center.
These three entities allow us to impact education across multiple channels and with unique experiences. Kupu Hou Academy is led by Dr. Mark Hines, a 37-year member of the Mid-Pacific community. GlobalX is led by Chris Rothschild, a seasoned experiential educator who has done work in over 20 countries.
Kupu Hou Academy
For nearly a decade, Kupu Hou Academy has served as a Deeper Learning professional development academy. Mid-Pacific faculty shared their expertise on Deeper Learning pedagogies with teachers and peers in the community and across the world.
Kupu Hou has grown into a leading professional development organization with community support from sponsors and partners such as Blue Planet Foundation, First Hawaiian Bank, The Atherton Family Foundation, and more.
Kupu Hou’s work reflects the Center’s vision of empowering educators. Kupu Hou speaks to the Center’s vision of empowering educators. Building the confidence and skills in teachers from public, independent, and charter schools around the world allows for stories, discoveries, and perspectives that that can only be originated through the connection between people.
The connections we establish between educators transforms the lives of students, and this is at the heart of the Center’s work.
Kupu Hou Academy fosters teacher professional development through authentic and supportive workshops held year-round.
Global Exchange Academy
A partner to Kupu Hou, The Global Exchange Academy (GlobalX) serves learners at any point in their lives by developing courses, workshops, and experiences that bridge place, community, and individuals.
Launching with its first pilot courses in Winter 2021 and first public courses in Summer 2022, GlobalX is an expansion of Mid-Pacific’s existing extended learning program (commonly referred to as XLP across campus).
Over the coming years, GlobalX will be a place where Mid-Pacific students and families can take courses and participate in community experiences with others from across the islands and world (mirroring the growth of Kupu Hou).
GlobalX designs and implements virtual, blended, and in-person courses that embody joyful and human-centered learning. We know that virtual connections allow new conversations to flourish, new friendships to be forged, and new, meaningful ideas to be shared. GlobalX will disrupt virtual education environments by using best practices and research in blended and Deeper Learning.
GlobalX Summer 2022 courses, for example, comprise of for-credit experiences in English, Math, and History. Some of these courses will occur on campus, others will occur virtually. All will be open to students from across neighborhoods, states, and countries.
With diverse opportunities such as Data Equity, Fishing Lure Design, and Mental Health courses, GlobalX Summer 2022 experiences utilize projects, inquiry, agency, connections as their student-centered approach.
Visualizing Consistent Growth
Each day at Mid-Pacific, students enter our campus with a desire to learn. In our classrooms, there is rich discussion and interdisciplinary exploration. In common spaces, camaraderie is nurtured across grade levels and backgrounds. The Center for Advancing Education is where Mid-Pacific teachers, students, families, friends, and alumni interface with a larger community of learners.
The Center is designed to be nimble. Over the coming years, we are excited to see how the journey of this The Center and its academies will continue to evolve and reach new horizons.
We look toward the Mid-Pacific community as our inspiration for growth and change. Join or teach a GlobalX course. Refer teachers you know to one of Kupu Hou’s workshops. It is your participation that drives us and influences our goals. It is our vision to impact the next generation of problem solvers through Deeper Learning that will carry us into the future of education, together.