 Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us here on Pacific Partnerships for Education here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Ethan Allen. With me today in Think Tech Studio are Kara Miller from Kara Ocean Consulting. Welcome, Kara. And Kayla Sheet are from the Coast Guard Academy. Excellent. You're the first Coast Guard Academy person we've probably had on this show. It's wonderful to have you both here. And our show is Who's Who in Gujigu? This is Kara's great title. Probably most people don't know. Where is Gujigu? Good question. Good question. Gujigu is part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands. There's an atoll called Quadulant Atoll. And we have a great image that shows Ebi Island, which is the biggest population hub in all of Quadulant Atoll. About 12,000 people live there. It's also the most densely populated island on the planet. As you can see, there isn't a lot of open land left in that space right there. So if you see at the north end of Ebi, there's what looks like a sand road and a few small islands right past that road that are connected to Ebi. Gujigu Island is the third one past Ebi. So actually Quadulant Atoll High School, I think I have an image that shows the high school as well, is located on Gujigu Island. And to accommodate students from many, many different schools, both public and private, on Ebi, the camp itself was held at this place, at the high school, on Gujigu Island. Great. Great. So this is a camp to help introduce kids to the ocean and marine science. So it seems sort of counterintuitive, right? People living on a small island, you would think they would all be intimately familiar with the ocean. Every day would explore the ocean, but... But in fact, that's not the case. There hasn't been a lot of place-based, project-based, outdoor classroom style education offered in the past to the students in this place, especially around ocean and marine sciences. There is some environmental programs that are focused more on various gardens, learning gardens. I know your Clean Water Project has a lot of field components to it, but not specifically about the ocean and marine science and coral reef and fisheries, both science and management side of all of that. So in the summer, when there isn't a lot going on for the kids on Ebi, this summer camp concept was basically developed through the public school system of the Marshall Islands. And being only the second year, it was the first time that the marine science and the ocean sciences were offered. A lot of the kids don't even swim regularly. Many do and love the ocean, but quite a few don't and don't have a very high level of comfort with the ocean at all. So using masks and snorkels and using data and gear that they're collecting themselves to learn more about their marine environment, it was a first for that. Yeah. And yet that's really critical stuff, right, to take advantage of local resources, local environment that the kids do know, they are familiar with it, they see it every day. It really helps. It shows them there's stuff to be learned from the world around them, right? They can draw some knowledge from their surrounding environment and make sense of it and find that to a science. It's not something done off in a laboratory somewhere, right? Yeah. So take us through a little bit about how you got this program going. Sure. Yeah, my pleasure. You know, I have to give a lot of thank yous and gratitude to both the school system of the Marshall Islands, specifically Jelton and Jane, who's the Associate Commissioner for Education for Quagelin Atoll, who I worked with in a past position that I held and spent quite a bit of time over on eBuy throughout the year and then at times in the summer. And noticing that when school ends, there aren't a lot of summer school continuing education, studying, preparation, whether it be for math, for science, for basic reading kinds of skills offered. And this is something that can both supplement what's already ongoing during the year and hopefully help with some of their performance on these tests and benchmarks, but also give them experiences and an opportunity to do something fun and exciting that's their home and their backyard that can show them a new possibility that makes education more relevant, more personal, more exciting, that there's a more emotional connection to. Absolutely. We've talked about before, I know, Ethan, you and I, about this connection to what you're studying and that really being the key to wanting to change something, whether it's in your behavior or your family's behavior or even larger on the whole island, what you see going on. And I think we really saw this program inspire them. Definitely. And I think what Kara was talking about, just like the opportunity to be able to go out and be in the ocean and look at what's around them. I think that was something that really inspired a lot of the students and just growing up on Kauai, being able to go out in the ocean every single day, that was something that I'm thankful for. And I think being able to share that experience with the students there was really something impactful in seeing that there's a possibility, even for the women that are there. So we worked with a lot of young girls there as well and just showing them that there's a lot of opportunities out there. It's just what you want from it and allowing them to be out in the ocean and learn about what ecosystem is around them. Yeah, I think it's very important for them to learn. They don't think of the ocean as being a classroom, but to learn that there is. There's things to be learned from this ocean. There are ways to study in the ocean and still have a very good time, have a lot of fun, but actually be learning things, being contributing also, contributing data to larger science databases, right? That's right. And also, why does it really even matter? And we talked a lot about the health component, human health, being very much linked to the health of the ocean. They all are very familiar with climate change. I think there's enough discussion and dialogue. They're hearing that term a lot, climate change, and they're getting exposure to it. And yet they haven't quite made the connection that we were trying to help them establish regarding human health, whether it's diet, whether it's feeling like you have some place to go that is quiet that you can go to as a retreat place to find peace or find a deeper connection to your home or someplace that basically is inspiring you to be more. So doing more from a leadership kind of discussion point for the island, knowing that their ability to stay there as a community, as people, not just for the food, from the fish and the ocean, but from, again, the health of that ecosystem being able to support, whether it's shoreline protection or a food source or recreation or all of these different ecosystem services that we've coined that term here in the West. But I think that the marine science students had an opportunity that the rest of the campers didn't. So it was only about 40 out of 103 students. And like I said, from all different public and private schools and the top five best students of each high school, but also the five at-risk students from every high school, which I think we really appreciated getting to work with a spectrum of levels, of experience, of capabilities, and from the student that came off as distracted the whole time to the student that was the most engaged and excited, playing the leadership roles, they all gave us positive feedback about loving the content that they learned and loving the experiences that they were able to have. So we feel grateful for that. Such an enriching experience for these kids, as the school systems, particularly out in the region, don't tend to offer stuff like this. That's right. That's right. That's wonderful that you were able to do it. Yeah. So walk us through what sort of what process you took the kids through. Yeah, sure. You want to start? Right. So the Spartan camp was a larger aspect of it. So around 2 p.m., we took the kids, took them over to our marine science camp, and we kind of started off with a lecture. We would go through the today's objectives of what we're learning. So we talked about ridge-to-reef resource management, different species. We talked about pollution, the ocean health related to human health, just to name a few. And then we did the hands-on aspect of that, so actually going in the ocean, doing some of the data collection, and practicing those methods with them as well. Excellent. No, it is critical. Kids learn that, experience that, understand what a sort of a shrinking resource the ocean really is. Right. There's only, what I was reading recently, 13% of the ocean is considered wilderness. Now, I mean, the rest of it, the other 80% is actually impacted by humans already. That's astounding. Yeah. When you look at how much of the globe is covered by the ocean. Yeah, when you sit on little islands like this. That's right. Yeah, it's truly amazing. So why don't we talk a little bit about some of the things that the kids were actually doing? The quadrants, you were teaching them to use to do surveys in a systematic way? Yes, quadrats. Quadrats, all right. And in there, that's quite all right. This was a new word that they all learned as well. And from the program that I've talked about in the past on the show, Quest. It's called Quantitative Underwater Ecological Survey Techniques. It is a University of Hawaii program that's run out of various campuses throughout the Hawaiian Islands. And I've been fortunate enough to assist in the past. So that is where the concept for this field-based marine science camp came from. Instead of scuba dive-based, it's all snorkel-based. And one of the main methods that I wanted them to experience was building their own coral quadrats and then using the coral quadrats to measure what percent of their marine environment is covered by coral instead of another substrate like sand or rock or algae. And then of that, how much of it is healthy? So I have a bunch of photos, I think, that show the process of using PVC pipes, huge ones. They did all the sawing of the PVC pipes themselves. They put them together into our one by one meter quadrats and tied the string themselves. And again, this was something that they didn't quite understand what they were going to be doing with these or why they were having to construct these. But once they were able to practice first on land, we did a lot of land-based practice first before we ever went into the water, how to lay out a transect line, which is the line that you swim along to take your data samples or to do your data collections or to basically collect your research data on. We use slippers, as you can see in this picture, to model the coral, but basically teaching them basic statistics, so basic mathematics, fractions, percentages, statistics, estimation. And we had tied this into the larger scientific process as well. So they were already setting hypotheses based on basic observations that we did when we all went out as a group practicing snorkeling. That was a skill they needed to just practice in themselves. So once we learned and felt more comfortable using the quadrics on land, we did take them into the water. We had three days that were really just focused on our field collection methods. We had two sites and the kids were in teams and they did all of this themselves. They gear loaded up with a lot of gear. It's like the whole thing. They have their transect line, their weights, their quadrat, their slates that they're writing everything down on and then just helping each other out using the buddy system kind of mentality, making sure that everybody is together and safe. We had some days where there was some current, a little bit of side wash action and our in and out was at a dock, but there were all kinds of hazards around still too. So I was really impressed, you know, the data collection aside at just their ability to step up and handle all of this multi-tasking for the first time ever when there's still not even that comfortable snorkeling. Swimming is a different story, but snorkeling is actually a very specific skill in itself that they hadn't had a lot of practice with before we loaded them up with all this gear and sent them out to collect data. Excellent, excellent. So what torched the things really briefly today, what sort of the big thing they found through all this? Really briefly. Sure. Do you want to talk about some of that? I think above just the educational aspect, I think it's also just giving them the opportunity to learn. And I think that is honestly the most impactful thing that they were able to take away from it because a lot of them, like we said, haven't even snorkeled before, they haven't even really looked at what have I been missing out on my whole life of what's there. And I think sparking that interest in science and exploration and asking questions because once we did get out there, you know, a lot of them were going, what is this? What is this? Why is it this way? And I think that's just really the big takeaway from it is opening up those doors and opening up those opportunities for the students. Wonderful. We're going to explore this further. When we come back right now, I'm told we need to take a quick break. Kayla Sheeda, Cara Miller are with me here today. I'm Ethan Allen, your host on Pacific Partnerships in Education, and we'll be back in one minute. When I was growing up, I was among the one in six American kids who struggled with hunger and hungry mornings make tired days. Grumpy days. That kind of days. But with the power of breakfast, the kids in your neighborhood can think big and be more. We're not hungry for breakfast. We're hungry for more. More ideas. More dreams. More fun. When kids aren't hungry for breakfast, they can be hungry for more. Go to hungarees.org and lend your time or your voice to make breakfast happen for kids in your neighborhood. And welcome back here to Pacific Partnerships in Education. I'm your host, Ethan Allen. You're on Think Tech, Hawaii. With me today in the studio are Kayla Sheeda and Cara Miller. And we're talking about who's who in Gujigu, Gujigu being an island on off of Quajol Matal, actually, I guess, in Quajol Matal, and the Marine Science summer camps that you had 40 high school students spent two weeks learning about their local environment in terms of the underwater environment, really learning how to take data, what kind of data to do it, how to do that systematically. Sounds like a very exciting kind of situation for them. I'm sure you had planned all this whole workshop out very carefully. But as so often happens, I suspect you probably didn't go exactly as you had planned, right? Can you talk about some of the things that were maybe played out a little differently? Yeah, sure. You know, I was really, really impressed with the Spartan summer camp program overall. So one of the things that I wasn't anticipating was how busy these kids were every single day from morning to night. There was either class, regular three period classes, math, reading, English, and then sports, traditional skills. Everything was based at the high school, so there was a lot of basketball and weaving, and they learned tennis. And there was actually two traditional martialese, Fischer, canoe builder and weaver that came in from some of the outer islands to teach the kids more traditional methods of life, really. And so there was not a lot of time. You know, we had a more rigorous schedule planned with them. So right away, knowing we had less time. And then the other thing was that I actually was anticipating just 11th and 12th graders, but we had as young as a 7th grader, some of the leader 8th graders going into 8th grade, all the way up to seniors. So we had the full spectrum, and like I mentioned earlier, we had both the most competent in terms of their test scoring and focus and things like that and some of others. So we really had a much wider variety of age group, experience levels, things like that. And just how long some of these skills would take, I think we take them for granted now, snorkeling, for example. We take it for granted, but when you've never done it before, it is something that requires a lot of practice and a lot of time and things like that. So, you know, we adjusted, we went with the flow, we adapted based on what we saw, the feedback that we got from the students, very specifically. Those would be some of the main things. Sure, sure. And I know you did introduce them to these modern techniques, but also to some traditional techniques like this traditional Marshallese fishing technique, right? Yeah, I was really excited. I had talked to Jelton about this and I knew there was a canoe builder, one of the only ones left that knew all 146 parts of the canoe who was coming in to teach the kids about this, because no one on eBuy does this anymore and definitely no one on eBuy does this traditional method of fishing. It was really, really neat. It was one of my favorite parts. So Joel Jake was his name. He came in from an outer island. He actually constructed a fishing net with the kids. It's made out of a very strong vine from one tree and then palm leaves, as you can see, stripped, prepared and then in a very methodic way wrapped around the vines. And when this is done, it's hundreds of meters long. It's incredibly long. And the kids actually got to go out with Joel, with this line. They didn't go to as deep of a part of the ocean that traditionally it would be used in. It's actually used to corral schools of tuna and other highly migratory fish, if you can believe that. And then actually swimming the thing, corraling the fish into the shallows, turns out they're scared of the palm fronds and they won't try to escape, even though in theory they easily could underneath the net. But I thought that was really amazing because this was couched in the terms of marine science and fisheries. And we had talked to them about quantitative versus qualitative data. We had talked to them about Western science versus, again, a Western term, but versus traditional ecological knowledge and some of these more traditional forms of science that the West is just starting to really appreciate. I know you and I have talked about this before, but for them to get to learn from a master fisherman from their own place and their own culture, but have it taught in the context of marine science and fisheries, I was really happy with how that turned out. Yeah, rich opportunities for discussion about why, you know, why this is effective if the fish could swim out, why don't they, but what are the behavioral mechanisms that stopped them from doing that? Why does no one do this anymore? Why have we never seen our family in E-bye using this net before? It's just, you just go pick a vine and pick some palms and, you know. Rather than buying a net, risking losing that net. That's right. Expense the plastic into the ocean, is that right? Yeah, you don't want that. So, no, wonderful, wonderful to be able to meld those two aspects. Yeah, it was. And then you say, I mean, this is, you're really, you're sort of on the forefront of this movement to try to engage kids in this place-based education that really is building their own capacities and building the capacities of the communities here to really take charge of their future, which is so important. Because these areas face a lot of, a lot of challenges going forward, right? I mean, climate change, rising sea levels, overcrowding in E-bye, certainly. Water issues, this, that. It's important for them to gain this kind of self-efficacy, right, to understand. They can understand things, they can learn, they can learn new stuff, they can master new techniques, there's ways to combine their traditional knowledge from their culture with other newly introduced techniques to them and really, hopefully, build some good synergies there, right? Yeah, yeah. I think what you're talking about is empowerment and confidence. And yeah, self-efficacy, I heard you say, but you're right, it's this idea of independence and feeling like they can make it on their own. A lot of them feel like they want to stay in E-bye the rest of their lives, which is great if that's what they end up doing, but we hope that the experiences they had in this camp will show them that there are other options than to just work on the military base or just be a mom or a dad or just take care of the house, that there are other options that, in fact, are desperately needed on this island, they're desperately needed and I think that these kids realize they're capable of doing some of these things that are missing, these skills are missing. Yeah, so I was gonna ask, did you run into, is because your program here clearly expands people's horizons in terms of the typical gender-specific roles they are, where women have very clear roles and men have very clear roles and never the twain shall meet, right? Yeah, that's a good point. Traditional cultures, and did you run into resistance from the kids or did they really just sort of go with the flow, as it were? I generally say that they went with the flow. I think some of the girls were a little bit more reluctant at first, and I think that's just part of the culture of the girls are kind of take a step back and let everyone else go first, but I think those that were open to hear us and know what, that were there to help them, I think they loved the program just as much as the male student counterparts, they were in the ocean, they were hanging out with Kara, hanging out on the side, and be like, hey, what's that? I'm so curious to see what's going on, and I think a little bit in the beginning, but honestly, overall, the girls were super interested and they loved the program, and I think it helps to promote their ideas and help promote their success in the future. Yeah, I think this is so important, again, to open people's eyes and expand their horizons, make them realize they do have choices. Yeah, if they want to stay on e-buy and pursue a traditional fishing career, they gained a good deal of knowledge on how to do that, right? If they want to think about going off to Stanford and becoming an electron microscopist, that door has now been cracked open to them, right? We did use a microscope. Okay. We were able to use a single microscope with a power outage. Okay. Can you believe that? We just used our iPhone light, not we, but our helpers, our amazing helpers. Thank you, Sidney and Katie. Good job. We were really lucky to have a lot of support for this program. Maybe I'll just mention that since I'm talking about it with the Siderno family ministry group that's out there incredibly helpful for us during this program. Me feeling like Kayla's assistance and presence was invaluable. I couldn't have done any of this without her. And it's a program that she's a part of that hopefully will keep repeating itself in e-buy. That's right, yeah. About marine and environmental science. Wow, wonderful. I certainly hope that happens. It's great. You guys have started something big here. I think it's gonna keep our fingers crossed. It's gonna go places, it's gonna become a regular part of that and generations of kids will grow and have their lives enriched from it. Kayla Sheetha, Kara Miller. I've been here, my wonderful guests here on Pacific Partnerships and Education. And I hope you'll come back in two weeks for our next show. Until then.