An instructional coach at Kapolei High, she served as an HSTA leader for 20 years
Posted: February 5, 2026
Joan Kamila Lewis, a veteran public school mentor teacher, instructional coach, administrator, and longtime Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association governance leader began work this week as HSTA’s deputy executive director.
“HSTA’s purpose is to be of service to our teachers, and I am proud to stand with and work for our teachers because it is those teachers who will champion for our kids,” Lewis said.
“I know what we bring to the table, and with our collective power, we won’t take anything less than a reserved seat at every table where education is on the agenda,” Lewis said.
“If we go with the positive presumption that all stakeholders want to do the best that we can for Hawaiʻi students, then our job is to make sure the other stakeholders know, from us, what we know about how the teachers are impacted by education decisions and how they can impact the students,” she added.
Lewis spent 37 years as a teacher at the Hawaiʻi State Department of Education, 25 of those at Kapolei High, where she served as an instructional coach for the last seven years. In that role, she coordinated training and professional development for staff and students, mentored teachers, and advised both administrators and future administrators.
An English teacher, Lewis helped found three of Kapolei High’s academies: its Graphics Academy, Human Services Academy, and Hoʻōla Leadership Academy, the school’s only four-year academy that helps students develop their natural leadership and academic abilities in a comprehensive school program.
She was also Kapolei’s summer school director for six years, a role she had held for three years at Nānākuli High and Intermediate School, where she taught English and social studies from 1989 to 2001.
Lewis was a 20-year governance leader at HSTA, serving at the school, chapter, state and national levels
Lewis was deeply involved in HSTA governance for two decades, starting with serving on the Government Relations Committee after she helped successfully advocate for a cafeteria to be built at Nānākuli High and Intermediate.
“We didn’t have a cafeteria at that time. It was the way they designed the buildings; it was a serving hall,” she recalled.
“It was meant to be this very function-follows-form type of architecture, but the red dirt flies in Nānākuli, and it turns out that on paper, it was great, but in reality, we had kids hiding in the bathroom trying to eat their lunch, ’cause there was no place to eat,” she said.
“So then my little crew of teachers, with our kids, we raised such a ruckus that a cafeteria for Nānākuli, which wasn’t even on the capital improvement list, went to the top of the capital improvement list, and we got funded the next year,” Lewis added.
“We saw our action end up with a cafeteria, the thing we sought, that our kids had a place to eat.”
She says it was an early lesson in how powerful collective action can be when addressing important issues.
Lewis held a variety of leadership roles as an HSTA volunteer, serving as a grievance representative, a member of her school’s Association Policy Committee, and a member of HSTA’s Board of Directors. She was elected president of the union’s largest chapter in Leeward O’ahu and later served as the union’s statewide secretary-treasurer and vice president.
She was vice president of HSTA during its most recent strike that lasted 20 days in 2001.
“I know what it means to be on the strike line. I’ve had to stand in front of teachers and get them to agree to forgo their paychecks, knowing that we were sacrificing not just for ourselves but for those who would come after. The collective will and commitment of our members in 2001 still humbles me to this day,” Lewis said.
“In the 37 years that I’ve been a teacher, and the 20-plus years that I’ve been in HSTA as a leader, I have experienced the outcome of many mandates, initiatives, policies, and directives that, in a perfect world, would never have been visited on our profession,” Lewis said.
“And while we might want to stop some of the changes that come our way, sometimes you just have to find a way to shape it, as best as you can. You have to get in the room and shape it as much as you can,” she said.
For example, she recalls when the federal government forced states to implement the No Child Left Behind Act in the early 2000s, which mandated standards-based education, so-called “reform” that critics said overemphasized standardized testing. That law, and its successor, Race to the Top, provided HSTA with an opportunity to alter the HIDOE’s stipend and extended day compensation policies.
“And that’s when we got the 21 hours written into the contract for the first time. The 21 hours is the first time that the department actually went on record to say that a teacher could do professional development on the school’s work time and still get reclassification credits,” she added.
Lewis has served leadership roles on a number of well-known organizations that support educators, public workers, and the community at large, including:
- President, Hawai’i Education Association (2022-2026)
- Reviewer, Hawai’i Teacher Standards Board (2021-2023)
- Commissioner, Hawai’i Civil Rights Commission (2017-2023)
- Examiner, National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (2010-2020)
- Trustee, Hawai’i Employer-Union Health Benefits Trust Fund (2002-2005)
- Trust Chair, HSTA Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (2009-2015)
- Trustee, HSTA Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association (2001-2006)
- Member, NEA Advisory Committee on Membership/Higher Education Committee (2010-2016)
Eshelman: ‘Joan’s deep experience in education and coaching will strengthen our field operations’
HSTA Executive Director Andrea Eshelman said, “As Joan enters a new season in her professional career, I am thrilled to welcome her to the HSTA staff as our deputy executive director. Joan’s deep experience in education and coaching will strengthen our field operations and, in turn, better support the school-level leaders and members who are the foundation of our union.”
Lewis replaces Eshelman as her deputy, after HSTA’s Board of Directors promoted Eshelman to executive director last fall.
“I first met Joan Lewis more than 30 years ago when I returned home from college to teach in the Leeward Chapter. I came to know her as a strong chapter leader during the lead-up to the near-strike in 1997 and again during the 2001 strike, when I served as a picket captain. While Joan stepped away from HSTA governance over the past 10 years, she never stopped being a passionate advocate for educators and students,” Eshelman said.
While serving as HSTA Leeward Chapter president between 1995 and 2000, Lewis established an induction and support program for new hires, resulting in an 80% retention rate among those who participated and serving as a model for other induction programs.
“The success of the program rested in the collaboration between our chapter UniServ Directors at the time, Susan “2T” Bitler and Georgiana Alvaro, and their counterparts in the DOE. Working together with administrators and other stakeholders, they demonstrated in this and other endeavors that supporting teachers didn’t always require a fight. They taught me how to stand up for our members, and more importantly, how to help them to stand tall for themselves and their students,” Lewis said.
HSTA President Osa Tui, Jr., said, “In the many years I have known Joan, I’ve only known her to be a fierce advocate for our members and their well-being. She brings to HSTA many decades of classroom experience and years of governance experience.”
“We welcome Joan back into advocacy work, and we’re fortunate that she will be putting her skills to use in support of our HSTA UniServ Director staff as they work tirelessly to serve bargaining unit members,” Tui added.
Lewis: ‘My job is to be the best sidekick’
“Over the 37 years that I’ve been a teacher in the state, a leader in the organization, and now as a 60-year resident of the state of Hawai’i, I’ve learned what matters and what it takes to fight for that. I know who I am, what I bring to any room I enter, and why I’m doing the things that I do. I’ve learned how to get things done, and I know I am at my best when I support others being their best,” Lewis said.
“So my job is to be the best sidekick to those I serve and support. My job is to bring my skills, my knowledge, and my experience; every tool I have to help people be the hero they have been waiting for,” Lewis added.
Growing up in the Keāpuka neighborhood of Kāneʻohe, Lewis was the third of five children for James and Ione Pokipala. He, of Native Hawaiian ancestry, and she, of Italian ancestry, made sure education was a priority, no matter what.
She attended St. Ann’s School in Kāneʻohe for her elementary and middle school years, and was accepted to Kamehameha Schools in the ninth grade and completed high school at the Kapālama campus.
After receiving what she called a “very good financial aid package” from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, she earned her Bachelor of Science in education and was elected the midwestern school’s first homecoming queen of color.
“I was a private school girl till the first day I started at Nānākuli, and I have been a big fan of public schools since then,” she said with a laugh.
She earned a master’s degree in Middle Level Education at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa in the late 1990s.
Lewis has been married for 36 years to her husband, Chris, who is a health teacher at Kapolei High. They are the parents of Rajah, “the wonderdog.”
When she is not checking out the latest movie releases, couch surfing with Chris and Rajah, or spending time with her siblings and mother, she enjoys visiting with friends and traveling with her two BFFs from college. Whether it’s to visit her Italian roots or something more, Italy is a favorite travel destination, she said.