Keonepoko Elementary teacher Hope McKeen honored for work with students, colleagues, and community
Posted: April 15, 2024
The Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association’s STACY Award for Teaching Excellence recognizes a teacher who demonstrates leadership, dedication, and passion in five categories: scholarship, teaching, advocacy, community, and youth. It is one of the highest honors bestowed by the association.
This year’s recipient is Hope McKeen, or Kumu Pualani to her students, a Hawaiian studies teacher at Keonepoko Elementary on Hawaiʻi Island. The HSTA recognized McKeen at its annual state convention on April 13.
Scholarship: At the inception of HSTA’s professional development program, Hope participated in a train-the-trainer course, and currently leads professional development courses for math teachers that run three times a year. She is also enrolled in a two-year course to deepen her understanding of the science of reading and another course to help guide and evolve her Hawaiian-based education program.
Hope said, “I got really positive feedback from teachers about my PD classes, and so I stuck with it for that reason. And now I’ve gone from having like five participants in a session to like 60. So it’s really grown, and the awareness of PD has grown, and I’m happy to be a part of that.”
Debbie Shirai, Keonepoko Elementary third grade teacher, said, “I took a professional development course from her called Numbers Make Sense. She made it so real. Everything we learned was, take it to class tomorrow and apply it. So that was gold.”
Teaching: For 18 years, Hope has served students in various roles, including classroom teacher, math coach, and special education teacher. She currently is a Hawaiian studies teacher and teaches 600 students pre-K to grade six. As a former kaiapuni teacher, she believes it’s everyone’s kuleana to know about and take care of Hawaiʻi.
Keonepoko Elementary music teacher Jenifer Tsuji said, “It’s so important to have her here as a resource that we can go to and be like, is this correct? Is this the correct history? Is this the correct pronunciation? What is the deeper meaning of this? And it really, really helps us teach the kids more deeply and accurately, the history and the language and just the background of the songs that we do and anything that we’re doing that’s cultural based.”
Advocacy: Hope has served in many advocacy roles in the union, including head faculty representative, grievance representative, Association Policy Committee chair, and a board member for the Charter School Governing Board. She also chairs HSTA’s Government Relations Committee and lobbies at the state Legislature on issues that directly impact teachers.
“I believe in the collective voice,” Hope said. “You’re not gonna get anything if you don’t organize. You have to organize to push things forward. And so I believe that we need good people fighting for our teachers too. And teachers are tired, right? And so those of us that can do it, like we do it, and we keep showing up and we keep doing it to get better things for our teachers.”
Debbie Shirai, McKeen’s colleague, said “For the past couple of years, I’ve been on this campus for 20 years but these last couple of years, has truly her being by my side has given me that voice…that confidence to be a voice for my colleagues that I didn’t have before.”
Community: Hope was born and raised in the Native Hawaiian community and has been involved in community events, sailing, and various performance groups, including hula, since she was young.
Together with her community, she created a space where cultural knowledge is shared, traditions are preserved, and Hawaiian culture is celebrated, especially with her students.
“Hula for me is kind of a way of life,” Hope said. “I’m grateful that I get to do it more often. I’ve always done it with my students. I’ve been lucky enough to always be able to do it with my students. It’s a way of life. It’s the way we interpret our environment.
“Hula really is an expression of who I am and who I’ve come from, so I don’t stand here alone by myself. I stand here with all my kupuna that came before me,” she said.
Youth: Hope is meticulous in instilling in her students a deep and abiding appreciation for the unique paradise they call home. She endeavors to help her students see that they learn not only from textbooks but from one another, weaving together the rich tapestry of our shared humanity.
Hope said, “It just makes me happy to see them be successful. And really, when they say thank you for giving them that sense of kuleana is really important. Even the ones that do come back and say mahalo for that, really, really does make the difference.”
The HSTA STACY Award for Teaching Excellence program was established to celebrate the outstanding work of the late Stacy Nishina, an outstanding public school teacher and longtime staff member of HSTA. As the recipient of this year’s award, Hope McKeen will be HSTA’s nominee for the NEA Foundation’s Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence and NEA Member Benefits Award.
