Friday, September 11 and Saturday, September 12, 2026
8:30 am - 4:00 pm
Hanahau‘oli School Professional Development Center, 1922 Makiki Street, Honolulu, HI 96822
$300 per person
Scholarships available! Please inquire here.
To register using a school purchase order, please contact us directly at pdc@hanahauoli.org. Mahalo!
How might we create learning experiences that help young people understand the stories of the Pacific islands while honoring the knowledge, resilience, and wisdom of the people who have shaped them? This two-day workshop invites educators into a collaborative exploration of the UCLA Foundations and Futures Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook as a living resource for inquiry, reflection, and curriculum design. Through multimedia stories, primary sources, collaborative protocols, and time for deep exploration, participants will examine Hawaiian and Pacific Islander histories, sovereignty, self-determination, climate justice, and Indigenous ways of knowing while considering how these perspectives can deepen students' sense of place, identity, empathy, and civic responsibility.
Grounded in backward design and the belief that teachers learn best by engaging in meaningful work together, participants will design a lesson, unit, or implementation plan that is immediately relevant to their own school community or non-profit. Throughout the workshop, educators will experience protocols that cultivate equitable dialogue, critical thinking, and collective meaning-making while receiving thoughtful feedback from colleagues. Participants will leave not only with classroom-ready plans and resources, but also with renewed inspiration and a community of educators committed to creating learning that is culturally sustaining, inquiry-driven, and rooted in the relationships between people, place, and one another.
WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
Build a foundational understanding about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, including the histories, perspectives, and contemporary experiences spanning the precolonial to the present day.
Develop literacy and the skills to communicate, understand, engage, and articulate different perspectives through understanding multiple ways of knowing, including indigenous, ancestral, familial, and diasporic knowledge.
Nurture critical thinking and inquiry on fundamental assumptions related to empire, capitalism, race and racism, gender and patriarchy, and other structures of power and inequality and how they shape society and the environment.
Cultivate holistic well-being amongst all and connections across difference by strengthening historical empathy, self-worth and mutual respect, cultural expression, and cross-cultural understanding.
Grow wisdom and agency to imagine and create new possibilities and solidarities for a more just, equitable, democratic, non-racist, compassionate, and sustainable society and world.
WORKSHOP AGENDA
Day 1: Structure, Content & Critical Exploration
Focus: Navigating the HPI digital landscape through a critical lens.
8:30 Breakfast then Gathering
Opening Po’āi: In the whole group, teachers share who they are bringing into the room from their three piko: kūpuna, children, peers, students, etc. What is your kuleana to Ethnic Studies in Hawaiʻi. (Might need to define Ethnic Studies)
9:00 Textbook Mapping
The Tuning Protocol (Modified): Participants explore the textbook structure. Participants provide "warm" and "cool" feedback on how the digital features (translation, font size) serve their specific student populations.
10:00 Pathways & Exploration
The Three Levels of Text: Participants find a digital primary source and identify: (1) What it says, (2) What it implies, (3) What the implications are for their classroom. (May use the Patsy Mink Comic Book as an anchor text and have the whole group do Three Levels of Text with this section)
11:00 Deep Dive with Tea
Independent Work Time: Take a deep dive into the textbook. Explore. Read. Get cozy with it and find one section that strikes you that you will want to use in your class.
12:00 Lunch
Informal Networking
12:45 Content: Hawaiʻi & Micronesia
The Chalk Talk: A silent, written conversation on large chart paper. Prompt: “What does this resource provide for the children of these island?” This models a silent, equitable discussion strategy for students.
2:15 Modeling
Save the Last Word for Me: Teachers choose a specific section or video from the textbook. One person explains why they chose it, then others comment. The first person gets the "last word." This ensures the quietest voices are heard.
3:30 Homework/Reflection
The Final Word: Teachers write one "Actionable Step" for their current or future class based on today’s exploration. Curriculum Designers/Admin/Literacy Specialists write one “Implementation Step” denoting use of this resource.
4:00pm Closing Pōʻai
Cohort examines a theme that they will continue to explore in their own decolonization process.
Day 2: Pedagogy, Unit Design & Implementation
8:30 Breakfast and Gathering
Connections: A brief "check-in" where teachers share one thing that is "bubbling up" for them after Day 1.
9:00 Backwards Design
The Fishbowl: Jaimee introduces the funnel to backwards map using the Patsy Mink Resource as an Anchor Chapter.
10:00 Unit Funnel
Participants work on developing their unit funnel.
11:00 Drafting the Unit
Collaborative Work Time: Course-alike groups check-in with each other to informally tune one anotherʻs unit plans (Charette Protocol)
12:00 Lunch
Refuel Outside
1:00 Classroom Integration
Success Analysis Protocol: Jaimee shares the completed funnel. The group analyzes why it was successful.
2:00 Peer Review
The Peeling the Onion Protocol: One group presents their unit plan "problem" (e.g., "I'm not sure how to make the environmental lens engaging"). The group asks clarifying and probing questions to help them find the solution.
3:30 Closing
Appreciative Inquiry: Each teacher shares one specific contribution they saw a colleague make during the workshop, modeling the "Appreciating Contributions of Others" rubric.
ABOUT THE FACILITATOR
Jaimee Rojas, Ed.M., has spent most of her 26 years in education at an equity-centered project-based charter school organization, High Tech High, in San Diego. She is currently a Growth Coach at Punahou School where she has also served as an Instructional Coach. She has collaborated with Kanehunamoku Voyaging Academy on their Ka Pou Kū Mau: Building Ocean & Climate Literacy Curriculum, and with Waiāhole Elementary School coaching their ʻāina-based projects, and is currently working with Kamehameha Schools on their middle school ʻāina-based, transdisciplinary projects. She also has worked as a School Designer with EL Education, supporting schools with their improvement plans. She received her Masters in Education in School Leadership from Harvard University Graduate School of Education and her Bachelor's Degree from Pepperdine University in English and Writing. She holds teaching credentials in English, Social Science, and Special Education and was a middle and high school Humanities Teacher for most of her career. Jaimee is passionate about serving schools to cultivate student-led experiences of deeper learning and belonging. She has founded three schools in her career with High Tech High. She has a 23-year-old son and loves to go on road trips with him, watch him play baseball, and just continue to connect as he enters young adult life. She also loves good food, good company, hot yoga, running on the beach, chasing waterfalls, and traveling.
THIS WORKSHOP IS INTENDED FOR
K-12 teachers, including but not limited to: history, social science, ethnic studies, environmental studies teachers, curriculum designers, admin, literacy specialists