April 2018

This semester at the University of Hawaii at Manoa I decided to take a course in Developmental Psychology. In this class we have learned not only the different theories of how our minds develop from an infant to an adult but also how we learn (and how we best learn) during each stage of our lives. One of the readings that I read talked about how our social and emotional mindsets change as we get older[1]. And in this article, one of the interesting findings was that “older people who engage in volunteer activities that are either socially or mentally demanding also perform better on cognitive tasks than do older adults engaged in solitary activities with low cognitive demands”[1]. And I don’t have to tell you that the members of Kiwanis are some of the most active people you will ever meet. During my time in Circle K International at Washington State University I was invited to go to the Kiwanis Club of Pullman’s weekly meetings. And I believe that, at that time, their oldest member was about 95 years old! And when she spoke and you talked with her, she was still pretty sharp! Every member of Kiwanis is goal driven towards the well-being of others. And this type of mindset, combined with being active in the community and a leader to our Student Leadership Programs, can help to keep our mind ‘all there’ as we begin to age.

~ Aladdin Roque-Dangaran

[1] Charles, S. T. and Carstensen, L. L. Social and Emotional Aging. The Annual Review of Psychology. 2009. 61, 383-409.

March 2018

During the past two summers, another Leilehua band alumnus and I have organized a leadership camp for the band leaders. Some of the lessons that we emphasized during the camp were Service and Fellowship; service in the sense that because they are leaders they have a responsibility to be servants to the band. Because they are leaders, they have to sacrifice more to create a better program. The hard part was getting them to convince themselves that they need to sacrifice more: not because they have to, but because they want to. We wanted to make them feel the same passion and dedications to the program that we had and still have. And once that passion is built it will be easier to create bonds of fellowship in their program.

This is exactly what Kiwanis does for the children of the world. We are building student leaders by engaging them in community projects. We are not hand-feeding them service projects. Rather, we are getting them involved in the process--they are looking for their own projects and organizing them themselves. By engaging them at this level, we hope that they develop a sense of civic responsibility; that in order to make difference in the world, you may have to sacrifice something. But what really matters is that they willing to sacrifice their time, make donations, etc. The world needs to be filled with more people who WANT to serve and give their time to make a difference. And that is what we teach our students.

~ Aladdin Roque-Dangaran

February 2018

Dr. Halagao has served on the Board of Education and plays a big part in the policies concerning multicultural education. I had the pleasure of taking her Multicultural Education class last Fall semester. In my prior experience in education, as both a teacher and a student, I felt that the structure of the curriculum was too focused on just giving information to the students, rather than making their learning meaningful. And that is what I learned in Dr. Halagao's class--how to make learning meaningful for the students. And as Kiwanians, we are educators to the children of the world.

The ultimate goal of education should be to prepare our students to become efficient contributors to society. When we use place-based learning and show what they are learning is applicable in real-life, we are trying to instill a sense of civic responsibility into our students. The reason that I want to become a teacher is to give back to the community. And where did I learn this? From my mentors, who were all teachers (both high school and college teachers). And an educator is more than just a teacher. They are mentors, parents, and even counselors. And in order to have a sense of civic responsibility, you have to be a free thinker. If we do not teach our students how to think outside of the box and to look at things through different perspectives, they will always be conforming to society. And this is exactly what I believe Kiwanians do. Through service projects, we are teaching children to not only care for their communities, but to recognize that there are problems and that there needs to be a Call To Action. We also provide leadership opportunities which makes our students feel more involved with what they are doing, and not just having an adult tell them what to do. And lastly, Kiwanis is a place to create fellowships; it is a place where people with similar interests can work towards a common goal. We are educating our children by creating meaningful experiences.

~ Aladdin Roque-Dangaran

January 2018

Test anxiety and the fear of failure is something that every student goes through. I believe that the way the school system has been structured (as far as my education experience), we tend to do everything possible to avoid failure. And when we encounter failure, we start to panic.

During my freshman year of college, I took a general physics course. I ended up with a B, but I remember that the first few exams were extremely difficult for me. During the test, I would hit a ‘mental roadblock’ and could not for the life of me think of how to approach the problem. I would constantly be thinking, “What is going on? Why am I forgetting this now?”

According to Make it Stick by Peter Brown, this anxiety took away from my working memory capacity. Going forward, I began to look at mistakes through a reflective lens. I learned to use it as a tool to focus on the concepts that I needed to spend more time understanding. While taking organic chemistry, I was utilizing more self-assessment as a means of retrieval, reflection, and reconsolidation. When you practice in this way, you learn to “view failure as a sign of effort and as a turn in the road rather than as a measure of inability and the end of a road” (92). When you embrace your failures and learn from it, you are making learning an exploratory process and making it a meaningful experience.

~ Aladdin Roque-Dangaran

December 2017

This word has always resonated with me. From a young age, I have always had a sense of service towards the community.

In high school, I would do service projects with the band, National Honors Society, and my school’s first Eco Club.

At Washington State University, my passion for service only grew as I participated in Circle K International (CKI) at Washington State University, and eventually became one of the leaders that oversaw clubs and projects across the Pacific Northwest. Upon graduating, I joined Kiwanis International which only fueled my passion.

As I look back at what I’ve done with these organizations, I realized that everything is apart of a cycle. “The more you get, the more you give; and the more you give the more you get.”

Everyone has a duty to serve because everyone is influenced by another person’s service in one way or another. And as we are given more, we should use that knowledge and power to give back to the community and those less fortunate, allowing the cycle of service to repeat.

I believe that my passion towards service started in high school because of the teachers and mentors that I encountered there. We are Kiwanians educating youth. We must do our best to instill that passion to children so that they may continue the cycle of service.

~ Aladdin Roque-Dangaran