By Lauren Barbour
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As part of a delegation formed by the Education Institute of Hawaii, English teacher Lisa Anne Tsuruda and Principal Fred Murphy traveled to three different school districts in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Edmonton, Canada in order to observe how schools have changed or tried to change their organizational structures in an effort to empower themselves on a more local level, especially in regard to things that could be implemented in Hawaii.
“Empowerment is about making sure that teachers are able to do problem-solving in their classrooms, less top-down management from the state, necessarily, that prescribes a curriculum, or intervention system, or other teaching practices in the classroom,” explained Murphy. “It also is about principals having similar empowerment in their schools so that we don’t have one size fits all solutions that come straight down to us from the state.”
Funded by a grant from the Takitani Foundation, the group consisted of 27 Hawaii educators, which included Tsuruda, a Milken Award winner and Murphy, chairperson of the Hawaii High School Principals Forum. While visiting the schools, the members’ responsibility was to observe and later report on the different implementations they saw. “I would say for myself it was so amazing and it was so eye-opening because I got to see things that a teacher wouldn’t usually see,” said Tsuruda. “And I learned about things that a teacher doesn’t normally know about because I learned about facilities, I learned about financial things and things from more of a state level, or a big level versus just being in the classroom.”
During the trip, the group traveled from Los Angeles to Las Vegas before ending in Canada, where they encountered an educational system most similar to Hawaii’s. “Their empowerment model was much more about every school in the district gets to make decisions at the local level and their standards are high, their performance for their students is high, the achievement rates are high and they’ve allowed folks to be able to make localized decisions and be able to do what’s right for their institutions,” said Murphy.
The purpose behind the trip tied into the institute’s overall goal: to provide schools with more individual power, in order to make decisions on a more local level. “I think the key is that schools have to be allowed to create what they need to create to help kids learn,” explained Tsuruda. “Where we’re looking at from the top, is the top pushing things down upon people or is it that at a school level, and it’s called site-based education, where at a school, we’re like our own little world and we can make decisions and teachers are involved and parents are involved and students are involved in making decisions.”
This is considered especially important when considering the variety among Hawaii’s schools and their situations. Tsuruda said, “And the idea (is) that it’s not one size fits all because every school is different, every place is different because it’s a different culture, it’s a different community, a different makeup of the teachers and I think those things need to be celebrated and I think those things need to be encouraged and those things are okay.”
After returning, the group went on to present their thoughts to Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi and is also organizing a two-day conference in order to continue sharing their findings. However, it is also up to the group members to implement change on a more personal level. “I think one other very important thing I took away from the trip was that from the principal all the way to the custodian, everyone needs to understand that we’re here for kids and we’re here for our kids to reach their highest potential,” explained Tsuruda. Murphy added, “You try to do a little bit more each time, you try to make things a little bit better.”
Having gathered their findings and formulated their opinions, Tsuruda and the other members of the delegation aim to continue sharing their thoughts in order to start more inclusive dialogues on the subject.
