Hawaii public school educators are encouraged to apply for a Hawaii State Department of Education Innovation Grant to design and develop distance learning units of study.

HIDOE and public charter school teachers are encouraged to work collaboratively in teams or individually to design various curriculums to support fellow educators who are engaged in distance learning or hybrid classrooms.

Priority will be given to curricular designs that can be scalable across grade levels, schools, and communities that effectively address ELA and Math Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, as well as important teaching and learning experiences that advance areas such as:

Social and cultural Studies
ʻÂina-based projects
Special education
Place-based units
Online citizenship
Digital literacy
Creative arts
Sustainability
English learners
Social justice
Environmental issues
STEM
Project-based learning
Civics education
Career and Technical Education focus
Social-emotional learning
Computer science
Multilingual education

Similar to previous Innovation Grant awards, all recipients will advance the strategic goals of the HIDOE via the Promise Plan: Hawai’i, Equity, School Design, Empowerment, and Innovation.

The Innovation Grant 2021 will be awarded to HIDOE and Charter project lead teachers whose innovative units of study meet the following criteria:

  • Target the root causes of a challenging and complex problem by utilizing breakthrough approaches to education;
  • Disrupt existing structures and systems to transform education;
  • Align with the five promises to students;
  • Adapt available instructional resources to create teacher’s guide and resources tailored to the curricular and distance learning needs of elementary, middle, or high school audiences;
  • Design innovative methodologies, instructional resources, and practices that are versatile and can be implemented within a remote or hybrid environment; and
  • Design innovative ways to connect students to critical issues with a community or global perspective.

The Leadership Institute will host “Happy Half-Hour” information sessions that give an overview of this year’s innovative process. Teachers may opt to attend one of these virtual sessions offered on Oct. 22 and Oct. 27 from 3 to 3:30 p.m. Educators interested in designing student learning are invited to gather at the virtual Creative Café to prepare a unit of study submission on Saturday, Nov. 7, from 9 to 11:30 a.m.

Sign-up details are available at http://bit.ly/innovation2021.

Other important information for this year’s Innovation Grant are as follows:

  • The submission window opens on October 16 and closes on November 9, 2020. All documents can be reviewed here: http://bit.ly/innovation2021.
  • All eligible submissions will be reviewed during the month of November 2020.
  • Grant awardees will be announced and invited to partner with subject matter specialists to further develop innovative content in late November through December.
  • Contributions of awardees and their curated content will be recognized and made available for all educators to share best practices.

For more information, email innovationgrant@k12.hi.us or call the Leadership Institute at (808) 305-4461.