Because Our Students Matter

What a welcome pause in the school year with planned or unplanned time to take care of the things we’ve been hoping to do (or not do!). Family trips, spring cleaning, sports activities, getting up later in the morning, gardening. The list is endless though the time is limited during Spring break!

The campus is quiet now but not for long. As I sit in my office preparing for the return of students, faculty, and staff, I think about the macro and micro, the systemwide needs and improvements on the horizon, the remaining nine weeks of the academic year, the agendas for various meetings, and even more granular, like the costume decisions for May Day or the number of persons in a Zoom breakout session.

Thereʻs so much to think about in education, even during Spring break! I had time to attend an inspiring webinar on “Human Schools and Deeper Learning,” organized by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The featured Deeper Learning educators were a middle school teacher, a district superintendent, and a researcher/author on deeper-learning practices. Their collective premise was that the industrialized grammar of schooling, evidenced in grade-level groups based on age, academic grades, learning organized in silos by way of subjects and disciplines, or efficiency, must change. Instead, “human” schools and deeper learning support inter-connections among students, content, and experience focused on human needs. School culture, trusted relationships, and social capital should be based on core values about beliefs.

At Mid-Pacific, we adopted Deeper Learning as the human-centered framework for how and what we teach because our students matter, because our beliefs in the Learner Profile matter, because our core values of community, caring, creativity, diversity, and innovation matter.

When the students and faculty return, you’ll already know that our Deeper Learning work continues and that Spring break has provided the time and space for the faculty to re-energize and re-focus on the good, human work ahead.

E Kūlia Kākou! Let’s strive and aspire together!

For our children,

Edna L. Hussey, Ed.D.
Principal