A Conversation with Pomai and David: Student Voice, Product- and Culture-Based Learning, and Community Building [Part 1 of 2]
During Nalukai Summer Startup Camp 2022, we sat down with camp director David Clarke and facilitator Pomai Bertelmann to discuss what Nalukai as a community means to them and what makes the program special. Enjoy these snippets of a two hour talk story with two incredible educators.
Pomai Bertelmann (left) is a navigator, community leader, storyteller, and educator. Born and raised on the island of Hawai’i, Pomai is a member of the Polynesian Voyaging Society and has sailed on the Makaliʻi, Hōkūleʻa, and the Alingano Maisu on passages across the Pacific. She integrates her ʻāina centered teachings into the classroom as a middle school teacher.
David Clarke (right) has been the head director of Nalukai Foundation since 2017. He has over 25 years of experience as a teacher, coach, academic dean, assistant head of school, and college counselor and is a lifelong advocate for student empowerment and youth entrepreneurship.
Disclaimer: The following responses have been condensed for readability.
What makes Nalukai special?
1. Diversity
Pomai: What’s great about Nalukai is that we’ve created a space with a really great microcosm of students from all walks of life. Listening to the students, what I took away was that your background is essential to your contribution. On a sailing canoe, everybody brings to the table different skills and has roles to play. At Nalukai, I see a reflection of that in a different vessel. Just like on the canoe, diversity is key to our success.
David: You look out and see these students from various economic and geographic backgrounds. They have different stories. What we know about entrepreneurship is that the more diverse a team is the better the product is in a lot of ways. By the time students get to high school, they don’t have many opportunities to collaborate and learn from each other and interact with different types of people. What’s interesting is that even though they are all so different, we look for and find many similarities with one another and we connect through both those differences and similarities.
2. Student Voice
Pomai: Many times as educators we don’t give students voice. It’s very much so the teacher in the front. What I notice about Nalukai is that everyone has a voice and they know how to communicate. That speaks to what the potential of the Hawaiʻi school system is like.
3. Product-Based Learning
Pomai: At the end of the day, being able to pitch their ideas closes the process. Pitching their products shows Founders that learning can be extended into the real world. Shifting away from project-based learning and cultivating a practice of product based, Nalukai is a stepping stone to look at education and entrepreneurship from the lens of Hawai’i. The team leaders are also a new element of camp this year. Starting with those who have experienced something and moving them forward shows that Nalukai post-camp is an opportunity for learning. Founders and alumni team leaders go into Nalukai to understand the life force and the product that moves you forward. As kanaka Hawai’i, having these levels of understanding where values are aligned––not even aligned but the same––speaks to the continuum of a practice. We can look at this as an internship for some and a summer session for others, but continuing the practice and learning from one another brings the program full circle to truly immerse students in the community and world they live in.
David: Getting real feedback from a real audience is important—as an education model we shift away from project-based learning to product-based learning, where students can provide potential users with something real and learn from that process. Nalukai aims to give students an experience more than a project.
4. Alignment with cultural practice
Pomai: I came up to Nalukai in 2017 for Piko (grounding exercise)––or manaʻo o ka lā–– (thought of the day). And I’m an observer, I’m always trying to see what’s happening around me and everybody’s place on the chessboard, so I wanted to see how culture and technology married at Nalukai. We always come from a cultural lens, and I was surprised and happy to see that they do work together. As the program evolves it’s beautiful to see a recognition of culture. Culture is everything. To know where you are from you need to know where you are grounded: where you are accessing and contributing to the mana of a place. Whenever we have the ability to bring together a network like Nalukai to be able to find solutions, we are in our truest form, reciprocating aloha to the ʻāina and people that sustain us.
David: Nalukai seeks to translate the language of entrepreneurship to Hawaiʻi–– in the form of ʻōlelo and in the unique landscape of the place we live in. You need to have an understanding of where you are to sell or develop anything in Hawaiʻi. A reverence for culture and processes that are informed by tradition let us create things in a more conscious and rooted way that respects the place we’re in. After two years of being isolated, community is more important than ever. People are hungry for connection with others. At Nalukai, we can create this connection while affirming who students are and incorporating the values they’ve grown up with into their learning. The world is hungry for aloha. If students can go out into the world with the confidence and tools to communicate––along with a reverence for culture––we’ve done our job.
