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[ Video Resource ]
- Title: Kuleana
- Description: Examples of Kuleana in practice.
- Video Duration: 6 minutes
- Video URL: https://player.vimeo.com/video/768789945?h=7a0f7a37c3
- Transcript: So Kuleana is honestly one of my favourite values. It's foremost in my mind a leadership value
So Kuleana is honestly one of my favourite values. It's foremost in my mind a leadership value, but it's the kind of leadership that we all need to have. It's kind of at a basic level it is responsibility. In Kanaka Maoli culture it was and is about responsibility for yourself, responsibility for your family, your community, and for the ‘āin a and you are intricately kind of connected to these things through responsibility.
My husband was born and raised in Hawai’i, in Havai’i, and I asked him about the word ‘kuleana’ and he just looked at me like “Yeah, you know, like kuleana” and I’m like “Yeah?”. And he just looked at me like it’s, and finally he said after, he said, he goes, “Well, you know, because I was raised in Hawai’i, like you know, we learned that in primary school”. And I was like “In primary?” and he goes, “Yeah, like, you know, it's, it's like basic concepts, you know, that we learned about kanaka and responsibility between kanaka and ‘āina, which is, you know, people and the land, and you know, they even have a, they even use it as slang. Like when someone's doing a job that's not theirs. “Oh is that your Kule?” He just talked about how much it has to do with taking that responsibility, in an honourable way.
An important part of kuleana is not just having the responsibility, but expressing that responsibility in our actions and what we do and say. But not just what we say, what we do. So that's where something like ‘Tautua’ comes in, which is Samoan, but also resonates with the with the native Hawai’ian model of expressing that responsibility through service-based leadership.
When I think about kuleana and tautua, yes there’s the big responsibility in it and there’s a big obligation to it, but the other word that I would bring too it is ‘Honour’. Like there’s an honour to take responsibility.
What it means to me, it's a bridge for me to connect with the past, the present and the future. It's an experience that we can all relate to. It's something that can mirror excellence as well.
It's what we encourage our students to do. And as a community, each one of us has the chance to reach out and really show that we are the leaders we are. Not just in mana, not just in genealogy, not just because we have a Ph.D. or we're at the head of a classroom, but because we are serving other people.
Getting to a place where we feel honoured to be able to go, embark on a journey with your students and teaching them and showing them, how we can all be responsible for their learning and our teaching and our learning. And it's something that's reciprocal between the two parties.
In terms of education, it's the kind of responsibility that we all need to have because the things that we need to do to produce better outcomes for Pacific learners and for all learners are really about all of us being engaged.
When they realise that the are in charge of their own learning, that it's not teaching, but it's actually from them. It's that they're in charge. It's their responsibility. One thing we do in the English department here at MC is we have tracking sheets and it tracks the assessments that they've done and how far they've come along and we post that in the front of the class. So they see that when they're looking at the board, they see it when they walk out of the classroom. So that teaches them that they're responsible for their own learning and they know where they are right now. They know where they have to go. And what's in between is really up to them, as much as the teacher.
Recently, I was in a conversation in a predominantly Pacific High School where these students were doing extremely well. They’re in, partially in this community that is heavily influenced by Pacific values. But one of their strongest values, it would seem, is leadership. And that leadership is something that they've learned at home and something that they see demonstrated in their community. It's also something they're expected to demonstrate. And essentially for me, that's a big part of what teaching is anyway.