New UHUA Office Manager

The Uehiro Academy is pleased to welcome Ms. Samantha Kishida as our part-time Office Manager. As she learns more about UH systems and the p4c Hawai’i Ms. Kishida will help us make the Uehiro Academy a more effective unit within the University.

Ms. Kishida, originally from Kentucky, is sewing her Bluegrass roots here with her 12 year old step-daughter and toddler son. She holds an MA in Counseling and Human Services in Higher Education and is excited to offer her administrative support.

p4cHI Flourishes in Taiwan

On January 27, 2015, Dr. Jessica Ching-Sz Wang, Associate Professor from National Chiayi University in Taiwan, gave an impressive talk about her work with p4cHI in Taiwan. She shared her pioneering Analects Discussion Class with school children, and her innovative work with pre-service and in-service teachers at her College of Teacher Education. She also discussed the culturally responsive ways in which she has transformed Jackson’s (2201) magic words and Good Thinker’s Tool Kit into handy gestures. See this link for a video of some of her original p4cHI practices.

Participants who experience her talk enjoyed engaging in questions and discussion with Dr. Wang following her lecture. They commented on the remarkable growth of p4cHI in Taiwan, and were excited to learn more about the original ways in which Dr. Wang has made p4cHI more accessible to both educators and children.

Dr. Wang is visiting the Uehiro Academy for one month (1/15-2/15/2015) to work collaboratively with Dr. Amber Makaiau on their international self-study journaling project. The project explores what it means to be a p4cHI facilitator, and how to make p4cHI a culturally responsive practice. She will also work closely with Dr. Miller and Dr. Lukey to learn more about the use of p4cHI in teacher’s professional development.

Amber Makaiau to Travel to the Kettering Foundation

Dr. Amber Makaiau will be participating in a multinational exchange knows as Civic Education: Experiments in Higher Education, which will be sponsored by the Kettering Foundation in March. This multinational exchange will bring together scholars, journalists, community leaders, and civil society practitioners that use a range of strategies designed to improve civil society by encouraging citizen participation and advancing knowledge of democratic societies. Dr. Makaiau will be sharing how she creates opportunities for students in the College of Education to experience the p4cHI approach to deliberative pedagogy so that they ware better equipped to apply a deliberative pedagogy in their future as teachers.

Innovative Collaboration: The Hawai‘i Council for the Humanities, The Honolulu Museum of Art at Spalding House and The Uehiro Academy

Participants viewed the exhibit and used the Good Thinker’s Tool Kit to generate questions about their wonderings that related to the exhibit. The participants were then broken up into three Plain Vanilla Inquiry groups. The topics of their inquiries were: What were the reasons that time for art is not valued in all schools? If something is no longer part of our collective memory, does it mean that thing never existed? What keeps us from being moved? See this link of more detailed description of the day’s events.

Dr. Kathy Swan: The College, Career & Civic Life C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards

On January 22, 2015 Dr. Kathy Swan, Associate Professor of Social Studies at the University of Kentucky, gave a lively presentation on the recently published College, Career & Civic Life C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards. Dr. Swan is the project Director/Lead Writer of the C3 Framework. In her presentation she both introduced the C3 Framework and gave time for p4cHI style questions and discussion. This was an incredible opportunity for educators in Hawaii to learn first hand about this national inquiry-based social studies movement and to engage in meaningful dialogue with their peers about the future of social studies education. Here is the event flyer.

The Uehiro Academy Welcomes Ryan Roberts

The Uehiro Academy would like to formally welcome Ryan Roberts. Mr. Roberts is pursuing a degree in Peace Studies from the University of Hawai‘iSpark Matsunaga Institute for Peace and Conflict Resolution. As a part of his program requirements, Mr. Roberts will be interning with the UehiroAcademy this semester.

Apart from his academic studies, Ryan loves to do some parkour. Check out his explosive moves here!

p4cHI at the National Council for Social Studies

In November, Dr. Amber Makaiau went to Boston, Massachusetts to give two presentations at the National Council for Social Studies Annual Conference (NCSSAC). The first presentation was with scholars from Tufts University, the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, and the Tennessee Center for Civic Learning. It was titled, Supporting Strong State Civic Education Policy: Successes and Advocacy Strategies. Dr. Makaiau discussed her role in advocating for robust social studies and civic education policies in the State of Hawai’i. The second presentation was a workshop that Dr. Makaiau lead with Rosanna Fukuda (HIDOE State Social Studies Specialist), PAtriia Halagao (Board of Education | UH Manoa COE), and Maya Soetoro-Ng (UH Manoa College of Social Sciences  | Matsunaga Peace Institute). This workshop was titled, C3 Inspired Learning: Redefining How We Do Civic Education. In this workshop, Dr. Makaiau gave an overview of the relationship between p4cHI and deliberative pedagogy and explained how p4cHI is ideal for teaching social studies and promoting democratic education. She also helped to engage participants in p4cHI activities. To see her PowerPoint presentation click here.

Over 100 UH Manoa COE Students Successfully Complete PHIL 492

This fall, over one hundred pre-service elementary school teachers in the University o Hawai’i at Manoa College of Education successfully completed the Uehiro Academy’s introduction to the p4cHI course titled, PHIL 492 Philosophy with Children.To see a sample course syllabus click here.

As a culminating activity in the course, the pre-service teachers planned, taught, and reflected on p4cHI inspired elementary school lessons. A number of the lessons did an excellent job at demonstrating how the p4cHI approach to teaching and learning could be applied to using Hawai’i’s newly adopted Reading Wonders texts to teach culturally relevant, inquiry-based, common core lessons. An example of one of these lessons is included here, along with pictures of the pre-service teachers teaching and engaging in his lesson planning activity.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations Articles

• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations Articles

  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations’s Momentum and Impatient Optimists have both ran articles featuring Dr. Chad Miller’s work as a Philosopher in Residence at Kailua High School. Here are the two articles both written by Mark Toner:

  Getting Philosophical about PD    |   Philosophical Approach to PD

Hawai’i Council for the Humanities: TALK Series

The Hawai’i Council for the Humanities has launched the TALK programs web page, which highlights a unique event called HI Society and Civic Engagement. This invitation only event will use the p4cHI approach to deliberative pedagogy to engage participants in critical dialogue about the Honolulu Museum of Art Spalding House exhibit titled, HI Society. Please go to the HCH website for more details: http://hihumanities.org/talk-series/