Feedback from architects

Last week the MPX10 class walked over to the University of Hawaii School of Architecture. Students have been working on a design project since last semester, trying to create a display space that will allow students to share their work more easily on campus. The meeting with the architects allowed students to both practice their presentations and get feedback on their designs.

Several students decided to rebuild their models after meeting with the professional architects because they got such great ideas on how to improve their work!

“One piece of advice they gave us is to make a person that is to scale to our model of the display space. They said that would help because it will show how big the model is and it will help the judges understand our model more. Another advice they gave us, is that we should put turf-like material under our model and label by numbers the different sides of the model and explain the gazebo by the numbers.” Blaine Tonaki

“I think it was a really good idea that we went over to UH to talk to architects and people who are working in that [the design] field. It was really useful and it helped me to get ready for the real thing coming up. Some of the positive things I took away from this time was that they told us to PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE! If you practice a lot it will make a big impact on your presentation.” Malia Strohlin

The final pitch of their designs is this Wednesday morning. Please wish your son or daughter good luck as they will be presenting to Dr. Turnbull, Mr. Cordova, Mr. McManus, Dr. Russell, Mr. Watson, and two local architects.  The winning design will be integrated into the school's master plan!

Mock Trial of Huckleberry Finn

Is that a real judge? No, that is Trevor Blake and Aly Soares serving as the judge and clerk of our mock trial! It was Parents vs. Mark Twain and the Board of Education, debating the question: is the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn promoting racism? If so, should it be taught in American public schools?

Students preparing for the trial with Judge Pacarro and guest attorneys

 As a teacher, it is difficult to convince students to read books from different time periods, especially ones written in dialects of the American south in the mid 1880s. However, MPX10 students had a real reason to read: they would be serving as a lawyer, judge, witness, or jury member in our mock trial. The UH Richardson School of Law was kind enough to lend us their practice courtroom for our trial, and we were honored to have Judge Paccaro, Attorney Hochman, and Ms. Soares in the audience!

Huck, Jim, and the Dr. 

Mark Twain on the stand

The plan, as devised by the clerk

A focused jury takes notes!

Pap on the stand

After the trial, Judge Paccaro and Mr. Hochman were able to give the students direct feedback about their roles in the trial.  They commented on procedural elements that could be improved--like the attorneys speaking to one another directly across the table--as well as strong lines of questioning by the prosecution in particular.

Feedback from Mr. Hochman and Judge Pacarro

In the end, the jury unanimously found Mark Twain not guilty of promoting racism, which is consistent with an astute reading of the novel.  However, from an educational standpoint, the verdict was irrelevant to me.  When I saw the attorneys on both teams combing through the novel looking for opportunities to verbally goad their opponents, or calling "objection your honor--where is that stated in the book?" I could tell students were ingraining in themselves the importance of using in-text citations, a concept I have struggled to get through in a traditional classroom.

The whole crew

In his iconic youtube talk Sir Ken Robinson challenges teachers to create schools that don't kill creativity. For 3 hours today while students were engaged and listening to one another, practicing public speaking, staying in character, and responding to text-focused questions on the fly, I felt confident MPX10s had avoided that pitfall of education.

MPX10 Art Walk in History

"My art piece represents how the country was built upon the constant communication between its inhabitants" writes Ethan Jung. This sentence started his artist's statement accompanying the art piece depicting the role of information technology in the United States. MPX10 students presented their work to more than one hundred visitors in the Weinberg Seminar room on Tuesday night.

Please click here to see a photo gallery. 

Students chose their research topics after a survey of US history, 1492 to the present. Topics covered a large range of their interests from Native Americans, agriculture, and disease, to ships, homosexuals, and African Americans. After conducting college-level research and presenting their findings to one another, students studied art techniques of contemporary artists including Kara Walker and Robert Raushenberg. Finally, they built a piece of art that demonstrated their findings on their research.

"This drawing is of a court room. There are two men that are whispering to each other about the woman. This is how sexism works these days not up front but in whispers," wrote Bradley Sakaguchi about his art piece explaining the history of women in the U.S. "In the future I hope that we will look at each other not as males or females, but as humans. We should be treated as equals."

Upcoming event!

Inviting all parents, students, and community partners to attend our culminating event of the unit!

Please join us!

Working as researchers

A big shout out to all the parents who came out to support MPX students during their PIP presentations at the end of last semester.  It was a huge success--Thank you! If you didn't make it, you will have another chance at the end of this semester.

To catch up to the present, it has been a busy first two weeks of second semester! Students have been working on the U.S. history research project (aka "timeline project") based around the topic of their choice.

Students meeting with guest speaker, Nanette Napoleon

I wanted students to get feedback on their presentation drafts from a full time historian so we invited Nanette Napoelon, civil war historian to class to give them pointers.

Criteria students co-created for presentations

Students can start to build an inner understanding of what "quality" or "excellence" look like when they help to define it, so MPX 10s co-created criteria which they thought defined an excellent presentation for this particular timeline assignment.

Students presenting their criteria to the class

More in-class presentations on criteria

Bryson presenting on the history of espionage in the U.S.

Finally, students presented their information to their classmates. Presentations will continue in the week to come in preparation for the night when students will share their work with the larger community during "Art Walk through History."  The event is from 4:30-5:30, Tuesday, January 28th in the Weinberg seminar room. Mark you calendars!

Digging Deep for the Answers

MPX10 students tackle investigative journalism to learn media literacy

This year Mid-Pacific Exploratory (MPX) grade 10 students are working as guest writers for Na Pueo, the school newspaper. The students selected topics of interest ranging from water quality in the Ala Wai canal to the potential for developing wave energy facilities on Oahu. After completing the project, sophomore Kris Kadzielawa said “I now understand the media’s techniques of persuasion and how to write and analyze news articles. Since this project [ended] every time I see a commercial I can’t even listen to it because I am just dissecting it in my mind.”

The project started with a visit from Dr. Ann Auman, the head of the Communications Department at the University of Hawaii. She taught a crash course in the do’s and don’ts of journalism to get the students prepped for the task.

The students then toured the facilities at Hawaii Public Radio and the Star Advertiser to ask questions about the profession and learn how the non-profit status of different media sources can affect which stories get published.


MPX students reached out to community members who could serve as experts in their relevant topics of interest. The students drafted interview questions and honed their interviewing skills in the community before sitting down to write their articles.

Mr. Perez, an investigative journalist with the Star Advertiser, visited the class to work with each student one-on-one and give them feedback on their drafts. Students then polished their drafts through several more rounds of revision. Sophomore Kainoa Behler commented that he enjoyed meeting Mr. Perez because “it gave me a good sense of how to write an article and how you have to show different sides of your story.”

Their stories, and all their different sides, will appear monthly in Na Pueo throughout the 2013/2014 school year.

Making complex arguments

For the past week students have been debating whether the Khmer Rouge and the U.S. committed acts of terrorism between 1969-1975 in Cambodia. The location and facts are not the key point here as students could just as easily discuss the legality of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan although Cambodia is the focus of the book they just finished call Never Fall down. The skill I want them to practice is the act of developing a complex argument.



In class, students wrote out charts explaining their thinking and then wrote reports that put their thoughts in paragraph form. While essay writing is not as sexy as tweeting, I believe the act of writing is deeply linked to the act of thinking, and students benefit from the practice of putting their words on the page. The final step in this process was to vlog their opinion, something I learned about during a session at the Schools of the Future Conference.



"Vlogging" stands for video blogging and it involves students filming themselves or something they draw while they explain their point. It is an excellent practice in delivery, as many students may have job interviews in the future via skype. The recording also provides a format for students to view one another's work and comment on it, providing an excellent feedback loop.