My husband and I just returned from a delayed and wonderful honeymoon on Kaua’i, the “Garden Isle” of Hawai’i.
We spent two weeks there, and nothing was stranger or more fascinating to two native Coloradans than the sea.
We would sit on the beach well past dark, watching the waves come in and out, taking sand away from the beach only to return it next summer.
A native Kaua’ian drive our tour bus down to the one lu’au we attended. Of the many stories Keoni told, the ones that touched me the most were about teachers.
Keoni told us that the Polynesians who first crossed the Pacific brought with them some necessities. One of the most essential items was the kukui plant, a tree that bears wondrous nuts. The oil in these nuts was the primary fuel for torches and fires, for any light not given by the sun.
Due to this, teachers (kumu) are honored on the islands with lei of kukui nuts, small wrinkled brown and white nuts that clink satisfyingly around a teacher’s neck as he or she transmits knowledge to the light of our world, to our children.
Keoni also told a story that made me laugh. When he was a student, the high school was directly across from Kealia Beach, one of the best surfing spots on the island.
Often enough, his steps would turn makai (toward the sea) at the beach instead of mauka (toward the mountains), where school was.
After surfing the long swells that constantly made and remade his island, he would tell his teacher where he had been, and she would just nod and hand him extra homework.
Years later, a new teacher who had not grown up on the island was dismayed when Keoni’s own sons displayed a similar habit.
In conference after conference with Keoni and his wife, she would bemoan the fact that his sons wanted to surf more than gain an education. Keoni just tried to keep his mouth shut.
Years after that, Keoni’s grandchildren had the same teacher, now a kama’aina (longtime inhabitant of the island).
One day they showed the same preference for surfing instead of schoolwork. When they returned to school, they spun an elaborate tale for the teacher. She looked at them and told them she knew that they had been surfing.
She nodded, then handed them extra homework.
We returned to Colorado to read headlines of Michael Bennet’s appointment as Colorado’s new senator.
As a teacher, I was crestfallen. I think Bennet is a good man, but he has only spent three years as superintendent of Denver Public Schools. Schools are making some progress, but the job is not finished.
Hearing that Tom Boasberg is the leading candidate bolsters my hopes that he may follow through with the many changes that Bennet began, but it cannot hide the fact that one of the largest challenges DPS faces is the constant interchange of leaders and vision.
I have had three principals in the three years I’ve taught, and not only has my school been closed and reopened as an entirely new entity, but the teaching staff has had a turnover rate of nearly 95%. Three teachers remain at the school who were with me when I started.
The students I taught in 6th grade don’t seem to trust many adults at all. They have known nothing but waves rolling in and out, reshaping their lives and taking their footholds out from beneath them.
They are trying to find a solid place for themselves amid an undertow of principles, psychology, and reform in the school system, but every leader seems to leave just as a real relationship is formed.
DPS students are trying to learn—never an easy task—in this constant state of flux.
Keoni and his family were used to the waves that reshape their shores, but they were also used to people who stayed long enough to truly know the habits of the sea as well as the habits of the people.
This, perhaps more than anything, is what our students need from their leaders.
Amanda Lueck Grell (luecka@yahoo.com) of Denver teaches eighth-grade English.
