Pili A Pa‘a is an educational project that was created to address critical deficits in reading, math and science for Native Hawaiian students on the island of Hawai‘i. The project then added a community school component, Piha Me Ka Pono, as it recognized that in order for student to succeed, the social emotional and health needs of the family and community needed to be addressed.

Native Hawaiians represent nearly half of the Kohala Complex school’s student population and are at risk because the curriculum was geared towards Western teaching styles that focused on individual effort and competition. Native Hawaiians, on the other hand, strive for achievement and excellence for the benefit of the group and not individual recognition. This project seeks to build teachers’ knowledge of curriculum, Common Core State Standards, and instructional strategies while integrating Native Hawaiian cultural values and processes.

The project provides teachers a four-week intensive training and collaboration period to enhance their teaching practices. Teachers work with an instructional coach to create units of instruction for their respective content area(s). The coach provides critical feedback and research-based instructional strategies to enhance the curriculum development process.

Through this process, teachers will be able to examine and integrate culturally responsive teaching strategies to increase academic achievement not only for Native Hawaiian students but also for all other student groups found at the school. Collaboration between teachers at all schools is embedded in the project to create professional learning communities within and between the schools.