illustrated by Jason Takeuchi

The diverse community of SEEQS fosters a joy of learning through collaborative and interdisciplinary investigation of questions essential to Hawaiʻi’s future. 

Our Mission

SEEQers will be stewards of planet Earth and healthy, effective citizens of the world.

Our Vision

Our Core Principles

The SEEQS educational philosophy is based on decades of research on how people learn. We are guided by five core principles:

  • Real-world situations and real-world contexts enable real-world learning.

  • A learning environment is composed of its community members, cultural values, and physical surroundings.

  • Learning occurs when learners take ownership of their learning.

  • Improvement of the organization requires consciously collaborative participation by community members.

  • Everyone is a teacher; everyone is a learner, all of the time.

At SEEQS, We Believe That…

  • Sustainability is a valuable but complex and multifaceted lens through which to view learning and to live our lives.
  • Reflection is the final and most impactful step in the learning process, for both academic and social contexts. We value looking back and processing as much as looking forward
  • Community-building and -maintenance are critical foundational elements to create an intellectually safe learning environment and are worth spending time on.
  • Mistakes, both academic and social, are an inevitable part of adolescence, and it is the role of adults - parents and teachers working together - to help students learn and grow from mistakes.
  • Iteration is how we get better at things. Middle school is an appropriate and low-stakes time to experience ‘failure’ and how to work through it with feedback. Revision and resubmission are critical elements of creating high quality work.
  • Projects are as important as (or even more important than) traditional text-based curriculum for helping students integrate and apply knowledge and skills. Student inquiry should guide these projects and allow for students to choose topics which inte
  • Inclusion of students with a variety of learning needs and strengths is beneficial for all students.
  • Standards-referenced assessment practices provide crucial information to help students isolate and identify areas of strength and growth, and are more beneficial than A-F letter grades.
  • Field experiences are an important and valuable part of the real-world learning experience; they expose students to content and experts that they can’t in a traditional classroom model.
  • Restorative practices are more impactful (even if more challenging) than punitive practices on students and the community.

Why SEEQS?