The STEMS2 Institute, in partnership with the Hawai‘i ‘Ulu Cooperative and Hawai‘i Farm to School Hui, has developed a pilot ‘Ulu Education Toolkit. The Toolkit includes dozens of educational resources about ‘ulu (breadfruit) that were contributed by community members and have been aligned to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), Math and English Language Arts Common Core Standards, the College, Career and Civic Engagement (C3) Framework, and Hawai‘i Career and Technical Education (CTE) Standards. The ‘Ulu Education Toolkit is currently being field-tested by nearly 20 kumu from six islands!
This project started with the Hawai‘i ‘Ulu Cooperative and Hawai‘i Farm to School Hui engaging their vast networks in late 2018 to collect a wide array of ‘ulu resources (i.e., diagrams, activities, recipes, etc…). In April 2019, the STEMS2 Institute partnered with the two organizations to host a professional development workshop on Hawai‘i Island where experienced ‘aina-based educators provided feedback and input on how to organize the collected ‘ulu education resources. Following the workshop, educator feedback was organized and analyzed by STEMS2 Masters Cohort 3 Alumni, Jaime Kent.
In June 2019, findings were shared with STEMS2 Cohort 4 Masters’ students, as part of one of their final authentic curricular assessment projects. Findings indicated that for best use, all educational resources needed to be aligned to the most current national and Hawai‘i state standards and arranged in digestible chunks based on both content and grade level. Based on these findings, the students of STEMS2 Cohort 4 studied each educational resource and aligned it to national and Hawai‘i standards and organized them around four themes from the Hawai‘i School Garden Curriculum Map – 1) A Sense of Place, 2) The Living Soil – The Living Plant, 3) Nourishment, and 4) Nature’s Design.
Between 2019 – 2021 the toolkit went through several rounds of editing. Resource contributors were asked to give feedback about the design, structure and content of the toolkit. Teachers from across the Hawaiian Islands piloted the resource and provided feedback. The resulting ‘Ulu Education Toolkit is now available to use by all educators and housed on the STEMS2 website. Please take a look through the resources and let us know how you are using the toolkit.
