July 2018

During this past spring semester, I was working as a long-term substitute teacher at James Campbell High School. I had a full line of 9th grade physical science students. What I learned from that experience is that your mastery of the subject only accounts for a portion of your effectiveness. The effectiveness of your classroom management can be the determining factor of whether your students learn or don’t learn. And that is what I struggled the most with during my time at JCHS. Through all my previous classes, they talk about some strategies to manage your students, but it is different once you’re actually out there.

I believe that the main goal of a science teacher is to make students question the world around them and the world in themselves. My classes were much more fun for both me and my student when the students were asking about related topics or how we can apply the lesson to other concepts. Once you start asking questions, there is no limit to your knowledge. I hope to train my students so that they keep making connections and is alway in wonderment. After this past semester, I have concluded that students do not like science classes because they are too accustomed to just being fed information. Science is the application of knowledge to the real world, and some students that I have talked to have trouble applying these concepts. That being said, I believe that the more interactive and hands-on learning students can participate in, the more they will learn because it becomes easier to see the applications; this is true not only for science, but for all subjects.

~ Aladdin Roque-Dangaran

June 2018

During this past semester at UH at Manoa I took a class in developmental psychology. One of the more interesting topics that we learned about was the development of the adolescent. Many of us work with high school key clubbers. And to many of them, we are more than just advisors or chaperones. We often create personal bonds with our students in which they trust us and we trust them. Prior to neuroscience, and even today, there was a stigma about adolescence as being a period of “raging hormones.” However, we now know that the surging hormones doesn’t tell the whole story. According to Steinberg (2011), the “maturation of the brain systems responsible for thinking ahead and controlling impulses is influenced by the sorts or experiences young people have.” Because the plasticity of the brain is at its peak during adolescence, what we experience can heavily influence the way our brain matures and develops. The connections that we form with our SLP, no matter how small it may seem, to them it can mean the world. I have had many a student just sit in my office and ‘vent’ to me. And as an adult it is easy to just push them away because it may seem like they are just complaining. But for many of those students they needed to just have a release to get them through their day. And it is not because they are ‘moody,’ but because their brains are trying to cope with the world around them, and we as educators can help push their brains in the right direction.

~ Aladdin Roque-Dangaran

Sternberg, L. (2011). Demystifying the Adolescent Brain. Educational Leadership.

May 2018

As the school year ends, I feel that this would be a good time to remind our members, student leaders, and the community about why we do what we do. At least for me, I joined the K-Family and chose a career in education as a way to give back to my community. But teachers do not teach to just feed students information. We, as Kiwanians do not just sponsor our student leaders and let them do whatever they want. Our purpose is to build a legacy of passion. Teachers are meant to help build students up so that they are able to find their passion in life and have the knowledge and skills needed to pursue it. As Kiwanians, we are building young leaders that can one day complete the cycle of service and inspire new leaders in their community. Like all legacies, they all have the possibility to crumble. But what keeps them strong is the passion that the members have for it; for what they do; for what they believe in. So, I challenge you to keep this legacy going strong over the summer. Yes, as Kiwanians, it may be easy, but what about your student leaders? They are in vacation mode! But yet it is our duty to help them keep that passion strong throughout these next three months so that they are even stronger once they go back to school.

Kiwanis4Kids Collection - During the month of April we had our first collection for our Kiwanis4Kids project. We originally started this project to donate school supplies and canned foods to Title 1 schools (schools that have majority families with low SES). The first school that we picked was Ka’ala Elementary School in Wahiawa, and it was a success. Leilehua High School Key Club donated about 3 full boxes of school supplies and canned foods. When I went to drop off the donations at Ka’ala, Vice Principal Mr. Wetzel was surprised and grateful for how much was collected. Part of the reason I feel that this project was successful is because it was for something within Leilehua’s community and some of the Key Clubbers may have had siblings or relatives attending that school. This just goes to show that people will be more invested in what they are doing when it becomes meaningful for them.

~ Aladdin Roque-Dangaran

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