 And welcome to Think Tech. This show is the state of the state of Hawaii. I'm your host, Stephanie Stoll Dalton. And today we are talking about schooling in the state and particularly in the experience of Hawaii's newest charter school. And that school's named Dream House and it's in Ewa Beach serving the Leeward area. This starter startup charter, actually there is already a year of experience and I can be corrected on that if there's more. This startup charter has the same urgent pressure to stay safe from COVID-19 and serve student educational needs as every other public school as it is included as a public school. Yet Dream House is vigorously enacting its vision and ideas for its first cohorts of students. And my guest today is Alex Tease who's the chief education officer for the charter school Dream House. And he developed and he drives the charter school to succeed for its what I call ambitious themes and especially that one to empower students as future leaders of Hawaii. And that is a commitment that you all are committed to doing that and that would be one of the things we'd like to hear about today, especially as you're carrying on under the COVID-19 restrictions and how that's working for you and how it could be better. So could you orient us a little bit since I don't know how many people are aware or have looked at your website or are knowledgeable about Dream House in Ewa Beach? But if you could just give us a little picture of your current operations and under COVID-19 and maybe wrap with how that affects your vision for the school now, if it does. Thanks, Stephanie, I appreciate it. And thanks for having me on today. It's great to reconnect. And I always appreciate the opportunity to talk shop about education, public education specifically and to thought partner around the ways that we can navigate this current environment which is unprecedented, which is challenging but which is also going to hold opportunities for us to work together and work through these difficult times. So Dream House Ewa Beach Public Charter School was chartered in July, 2017 after I would say five full years of working alongside of students, parents, educators, community leaders, a founding team finally, finally, finally got over what we call the starting line which was getting our charter application passed and I think that was a very humbling experience for all of us and also an experience through which we learned a lot of lessons and a lot of real monotone that we invest daily at Dream House Ewa Beach. I always tell people, had we not gone through the challenges of the application process, we might not know how to lead or how to manage our school today. So I looked back and connected dots and realized that all of the strife really, the challenges going through the actual application process and getting the school open were all necessary. So we did eventually launch in 2019 after two years of looking for a facility and building our team and growing out our board and recruiting families, raising money, getting all the curriculum materials, getting iPads, getting polo shirts for our kids on and on all of the things that go into launching a brand new public charter school. And we opened in July 2019 in 3,400 square feet of borrowed office space in the La Lonnie Village shopping plaza on a Fort Weaver Road in Ewa Beach. And that was a space that was lent to us or rented to us really on a temporary basis from Alexander Baldwin, a very gracious and philanthropic partner of ours that allowed us to start and allowed us to get off the ground. Well, let's go to the space issues a little bit later. I wanted to get back up onto some things you implied there which had to do with challenges of the proposal. But before that, that I think would be interesting for everyone to be aware of what this takes and then knowing that you're gonna tell some real challenges there. But before that, what is your motivation? What was your motivation to do this and to go on with it even before you knew what it was gonna take to actually get through it? But what was your first motivation? Can you tell us a little bit about your inspiration? Because you've needed a lot of it to get through this, I think. I have. My personal motivation was the students and the families that I taught and learned from back when I was a teacher for America, Hawaii teacher from 2008 to 2010 in Ewa Beach at Elima Intermediate. I lost my job due to furlough Fridays and due to the cuts and the union negotiations that were going on. So my motivation was really to return to Ewa Beach and to the Ewa community and serve as I had done years before. And my commitment was to the very same kids and families that really have shaped my educational and professional personal trajectory as an educator, as a leader, as a community member. Spend a humbling, humbling journey to get here. But my motivation every day was to not give up on the idea and the dream that we could build a school that was grounded in the identities of our children and that focused on empowering each and every one of them to be leaders with and for their community. Well, as you share that, and thank you because it's very inspiring to know that that Detra America experience really did enter your head and bring you back as someone to contribute where it's really needed in the education of our Hawaiian youngsters. So what did you think about going through this process when you started, did you expect it to be relatively time consuming and following the rules and regulations? Or, and what did you actually find out what it was as you proposed, as you got into your proposal and with your team? You know what it was, I was actually sharing with one of my instructional leaders today. I have been making these different recipes with my wife out of this book called Whole 30. And you turn to a recipe and you go down through the ingredients and you realize one of the ingredients is actually another recipe. So you have to turn to that page and you have to build out that recipe. And perhaps in that recipe, there's another recipe and that was really the story of the charter. It wasn't just answer questions. It was, if you had to answer a question of what is your sixth grade curriculum, you needed to build out curriculum for all of the courses. You needed to map the curriculum. You need to build out assessments. You need to build out professional development around the curriculum. You need to build out different unit plans. All of that was nested within one question of what is your curriculum or give us an example of your curriculum. So there was really a lot required of the application. It was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of materials and of exhibits and addendum. And then beyond that, there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of Google Docs and spreadsheets and source material that went into creating some points, one or two pages that was submitted. So the experience was, like I said, humbling, but it also pushed us to think through not only the big visionary components that draw educators and entrepreneurs to starting schools, but also the more granular detail oriented components that are the most important on a daily basis. People walk around a school and they're committed to and they live a vision and they live the values. At the same time, the tiniest details need to be thought through in order to open a building and open a school and have children and families come to your school and they're on a daily basis. That is very informative. And in general, I don't think we're all aware of the, especially K-8 or so that or actually K-12 too, but with the youngsters, you're teaching sixth grade. Your dream house is intending to go six to 12th grade, but right now you've done your year of sixth grade and you're in your seventh as far as I've read and heard you speak, but I think that the notion of like maybe eight preparations a day if you're doing a full curriculum so that what you're talking about is that you, when you say curriculum, you're working out science and math and reading and social studies and all of the things that you have to do during the day. Now, so I mean, when you say that to me, I mean, Todd, I really am astounded at the challenge of that. Is there anything that you see as a way to just make a comment about streamlining it? Is there, and would you encourage other people to take this on? I think if someone is committed or a group of people are committed to building a school, then they should by all means do everything in their power and their capabilities to put an application together, submit it to the state and ask for the permission to and the privilege to open a public charter school. I think what gets lost sometimes, it was once described by a charter commissioner is that we focus so much on the water and not enough on the pipe. And what I mean by that is if our children are the water, the vibe, the light, we don't necessarily, when we go to the charter commission, focus so much on the pipe and the infrastructure around the children. Everyone believes and agrees that children are our most precious asset. They are our future. Got it. But the building of a school and the infrastructure of a school and everything from academics to organizational and operational plans to your finances, your governance structure, community partnerships. There's so much to not only think through, but to be working on and building. And it's almost like you have to come with a school already in motion through your application process and then get it approved and then continue and keep going. If you come with the very beginning ideas or scaffolding, I don't know that people are ready then. And we certainly weren't. We weren't ready our first year. And we were asked to take another year and invest one more year in all of the things that it was that we wanted to do. And I would recommend that for anyone who wants to start a school that if they're committed to doing so, then by all means please do. And if someone tells you that you need another year, then take another year. Nothing bad will come from investing more time and energy into building innovative educational models or building community partnerships and family networks. Now, all of those things are the work and whether it's under the massive of a school in progress or a school soon to open, those are all the right things that we need to be doing as educators and entrepreneurs. That's really informative. I think that it is remarkable that you've come through all of this challenge and that the success of approval and implementation and that you have such a strong commitment to the vision and the mission of the school. So can you tell us a little bit more about that and indulge yourself in being able to speak about something that I'm sure is very pleasant to observe? Sure, I appreciate that Stephanie. So our vision is empowering homegrown leaders for our island community. And the three components of empowering homegrown leaders for our island community is one, the word empowerment. Think about how we can work alongside of our families and our kids to have them be the true agents of change in their life. We're not telling kids and families that we have all the answers, but we wanna help unlock the questions that really are gonna see our kids realize their full potential and become the best versions of their most authentic selves. So that's really determined empowerment. Homegrown leaders, we focus on investing our kids in our local community. If kids wanna go away for higher education or for life experience, that's great. But the vision, the true vision of DreamHouse is for kids to return home to their community and be the future leaders of not only our community, but our islands. And one of the components of starting the school that frustrated us the most is that we have to felt like our community and the Ewa Plain and the Honolulu region and the Leeward Coast were left behind a little bit in discussions about leadership and innovation and who is it that's gonna lead our state forward? And our point was, what about our kids? What about our kids growing up along Fort Weaver Road or in Kalaya Lower, Kapolei or up in the Maakakeel or Nanakuli, Waianae and Makaha? What about these kids and our children who have exceptional potential? And we believe that they can be the leaders of our island community, not just of their neighborhood, not just their town or their side of an island that are truly our complete and whole island community. So empowering homegrown leaders for our island community is something that lives deep within the way that we operate our school every day. And at the end of the day, we believe that our organization is vision and values driven and all of the other pieces and components can fall into place. But the first thing we align around, and that's not just internally our staff, but it's also our board, our nonprofit board, our families, applicants, donors, everyone who comes to DreamHouse, we want them to be vision and values aligned so that they're committed to not only where we wanna go with and for our kids, but how we're gonna get there. So how did you identify the staff and faculty for the work you imagine would be the teaching load they would have? So how did you suss them out? Tell us a little about that. It's interesting, all of the people who are here at DreamHouse right now are people that I did not have prior relationships with before DreamHouse. And I am an educator and I go back to being an educator right when I graduated from undergrad in 2008. So for the past 12 years of my life, my network has been educators and educational leaders, but everyone who's here at DreamHouse is I guess not part of my initial network. And the interesting part about that is that I thought I was gonna start this school alongside of my friends from Teach for America or University of Hawaii at Manoa. But those folks were there and told the starting line and then from the starting line were these new folks, were these new teachers, these new educators and new innovators and people who were just creatives who were out there that I didn't know about. And they came to DreamHouse because of again, the vision and values, it's been a real blessing to know that my friends, my network, the people that I've entrusted this journey with were part of that journey to get the school started. And it's almost like we handed it off to the new wave of people coming in saying, hey, gosh, we wanna be part of that too. It wasn't, oh, you haven't been around for five or six years or we don't know you, it was, where is your heart? What kind of educator are you? Photo one, I mean, show the photo of this. Oh, my team, yeah. So this is our founding team from last year. We're actually outside at La Lani Village. You can see the supercuts and the UPS in the background. So these are 10 of us. And like I said, I mean, and the thing is, everyone came to DreamHouse one way or another through a connection or through hearing about us from a friend or an auntie or their son or daughter went to DreamHouse for a leadership workshop or a weekend camp. So everyone has really come to DreamHouse because they believe and we believe in the vision, in the way we are hoping to reimagine and redefine public education for our kids. So it's been really cool to see the team filled out in a really organic way that's really galvanized around and committed to this vision. Well, also the kinds of activities that support the theme or actually drive the theme or imbue those that those values in the students. So Melissa, can you show a knot the next one of an activity of the kids where they've been? So, I mean, these kinds of activities that you have them involved in, Alex, these are, tell us a little bit of how that's leadership. I mean, without teaching and studying this, maybe it would be helpful to hear you tell us how that. Sure, sure. So this is actually a picture of three sisters that I know Makaha is an organic farm up in Makaha. And the three sisters, two of the sisters go to our school as current seventh graders and one is in 10th grade. So she's not a DreamHouse student, but I love about this picture is one, three sisters planting Kalo, but also just touching the earth. There's another picture where the little sister is looking at her older sister to see how she's doing it. And then the littler, littler sister looking at her, the middle sister. So there's this, there's this transfer of knowledge and like doing and watching and learning in a great tactile way. And the reason I like, I think this is a great photo, but the reason I really like it is because that is learning, that is understanding culture and familial connection to not only land, but each other and getting your hands, literally getting your hands dirty. Because the rest of that lesson was learning about Kalo and learning about the importance of Tara in Hawaii and learning about the importance in the, really the history and genealogy of the Kalo plant and the Kalo root and what it means to take care of a low E and all of these really important things for our families who specifically are native Hawaiian, over 60% of dream house families are native Hawaiian. So it's really important for us not only from a staff perspective, but from a programming perspective and a student leadership perspective that our children are immersed in experiences to better understand themselves, their connection to the culture, their connection to their community. And through this, we can teach so many different content areas, but the core of what we're doing really is that connection. And that connection of them in joint productive activity, the working together part of leadership. It's not just George Washington up there leading the troops or King Kamehameha leading his armies. It's about this working together that you just described so well. I think that's very informative. And Melissa show the next picture of the activity. I think it's photo three, photo three. Yeah. And so this one shows you downtown Honolulu as far as I can tell whether it's a field trip or can you tell us a little bit about what's going on here? You've left the campus, you're in the city. Sure. So when Dream House did not find a facility to open the school in the fall of 2018, we realized that we were gonna have to do something in the meantime for the 12, 16 months that would be before we actually opened an official school. So we put together these weekend workshops, we call them leadership camps and kids would come together for just a day. And we'd usually do two to three different experiences. And this one specifically was April, 2019. So about four months before we actually opened the schools and some of those children who are in that picture were Dream House students, some of them weren't. But they signed up to come to what we call our healthy leadership boot camp. We took the kids to, they hopped out of bus and we met at La Lani Village, hopped out of bus. We went to the CrossFit gym that I was a part of and we did a CrossFit workout with coach Kenny Patton who was a former University of Hawaii player and it fell as the coach to some of the kids for their own soccer and leadership sports camps. So then we walked through Cacaaco and went over to the new Whole Foods and we gave every single one of our kids a $10 gift card. And then we let them free into Whole Foods and they went out and they pooled their money and they bought stuff and they had to check out on their own and then they're meeting and working alongside of each other to figure out how much can they get with $70 if they pool their cards and it was just great to see and you can see, again, the connection between our kids and them just operating and learning about a new place and all of them, every single one of them said they had never been to Cacaaco, they had never been to Whole Foods, they had never been to that Whole Foods and to have $10 in their pocket and the opportunity to eat lunch and work out and have some fun was one of our leadership camps. Yeah, Melissa, show the next slide, next photo. I think it's four, yeah. So here, I mean, this looks like a values building and activity where they're understanding a little more about their constitutional right to demonstrate and things like that. Is that what's going on now? So this is the Onipa Peace March in March 2020. So earlier on this year before the pandemic really shut things down and what's interesting about this photo is this is a march in the streets with the Hawaiian flag and the state of Hawaii flag. The week, at least a week earlier, the kids were at the state capitol for the opening day. It was either the week earlier or the week after, but it was a week apart and we had, oh, so that would actually, you know what, that would have been in January then when the capitol would have opened. Anyways, the field trips we did were about halfway through our year. We had the kids gather and join together and many of them had asked that they could participate in the Onipa Peace March and we said, let's do it. Let's all go down into the school. And then we also went to the opening day of the state capitol and we built programming around the essential question of where does power lie? Does it lie in a building? Does it lie in a title? Does it lie in the people? Does it lie in a march? Does it lie in a language? And we had kids grapple with the conflict and the tension sometimes between demonstrating for cultural values and for leadership through values and through cultural practices and then also the hierarchy and structure and elected more Western nature of government and to understand that there is a world that we live in where it's really important to navigate both and to understand and connect with both and not allow the pendulum to swing so far to one side that you alienate the other. So it's really cool to see 11 year olds just immerse themselves in those type of questions and that type of understanding. Yes, it's so interesting and informative because we need to do so much of that more obviously in our educational programs everywhere in the country. It's really critical for our citizenship and to preserve our democracy. But could you show us some pictures, those next pictures at the space, Melissa? Because I wanted to, well, this is such a beautiful picture. I'm going to put it under cover. Yeah, that's great. So you can set them in little circles, you know, way far apart from each other, but can you go on to the next one, Melissa? That's beautiful space, yeah. Well, I noticed that there's so much glass in your building and if you can even go on to the next one, Melissa, because I guess we're probably moving towards a few more minutes here, but there's, and then also on the, that this is the kind of differentiated space that really energizes the teaching and the learning and motivates and excites people. I mean, the color like behind you and the other colors that you use. Our green screen wall here, sure. Our, you know, putting youngsters in an environment and teachers too that is energizing and that generates your good feelings about what you're trying to do. But I noticed that in the logo shot, that photo that's actually behind us, those glass walls were interesting to me because they were through two classrooms so that you can see through spaces. And I believe or check with me that there's an administrative space that's right in the middle of these other classrooms where the, so that everybody can kind of see all the enterprise that's underway. And it just seemed to me that that was another part of this modeling and showing communities working together and joint activity and sharing and doing the kinds of things that you talked about enact the leadership notions about how the leadership is about doing work with community and in those modes. So did you particularly design the space like that or were you offered that? We work closely with the architect to design a space that was gonna be conducive to our learning model. You'll see a lot of glass. There's four of our classrooms that don't have walls. They're just big bays where it's more of a studio model. So it's a little louder. There's a little bit more buzz and energy but the whole glass space is where our school leadership and our student support team are. And it's interesting because not only can we see and feel what's going on in the school but people can see and feel us as well. And there's this connection between all of our staff whether you're a classroom teacher or you work with children with special needs or you're an administrator and you're working on more of the paperwork and bureaucracy of running a state agency or you're working on finances, whatever it might be. You can see one another. You can collaborate. You can work alongside of one another and there's only glass in between. So it's really a fun space to be a part of. Well, I heard you say something about student leadership team. So that was a question I had as to the governing framework for the charter school. And is it that you all have, and you mentioned a board earlier. So you have these structures of governance for your charter school. That's a little bit different from your ordinary public school, right? Can you talk a little bit about what that difference is and what that means to you? Sure. So public charter schools are public schools in the state of Hawaii. We roll up to the public charter school commission that offers us a contract and a charter to operate our public school. And the charter commission then rolls up to the board of education and then rolls up to the governor eventually. So we are a state agency. We do receive public dollars, taxpayer dollars. But we also operate in a much smaller, more vision and mission driven manner in that our decisions are made very close to our school. They're made very close to our kids. They're made very close to what our individual school is doing. The Department of Education is in system. So very large system. There are administrators who uphold the system. There are people whose jobs and whose roles are to maintain the system operating so that over 180,000 kids can wake up every day and have a school to go to. We don't view ourselves as administrators. We don't view Dream House as a system. We don't view it as a hierarchy or bureaucracy. We have a school board that oversees and governs our academic, organizational and financial performance frameworks to ensure that we are holding ourselves accountable to the responsibility and the privilege of being a state agency. But at the end of the day, our decisions and the work that we do here at Dream House is a direct result of the needs of our families and our community. And it's an opportunity for schools to be truly community based and natured. And I do sense that the Department of Education is moving in that direction. And I do sense that it is the will of Department of Education leadership and staff at all levels to be more community oriented minded. It's just a little easier for us to do because we're so small. So I can't speak to how hard it is for the Department of Education. I tell you, they're doing a lot more than we certainly are in this area for our one school. And you're helping lead the way or cut the path. So it's a lo-ha time here for us. And that means we have to wrap it up. And I hope that you'll come back and give us a jump in at another time when things are interesting and to keep us apprised of how charter schools move forward and what happens to them. Your story so far is just so dramatic and interesting. And I know there's a lot we didn't cover here relating to the space. So there's plenty more we can talk about, Alec. So I'll look forward to staying in touch, if you will too. I think that we're out of time. And this is State of the State of Hawaii on Think Tech Live. And our conversation has been with Alex T. He's Chief Education Officer at the Charter School Dream House, Ebba Beach. So I'll see you again in two weeks on the next State of the State. Aloha, everyone, and aloha.