WEB Transcript HIH Episode 105 Kalaʻi Miller / Home is Here Aloha, I’m Kalaʻi Miller and welcome to Home is Here.

We saddled up and took a ride to the windward side of Oʻahu to explore the healing power of horses.

Based in Waimānalo, Therapeutic Horsemanship of Hawaii is a non-profit that’s using these gentle giants to improve the minds and bodies of their riders.

Dana Vennen / Therapeutic Horsemanship of Hawaii Executive Director I think that people have always felt a connection to horses.

In some cases, it can be incredibly strong.

And the horses just sort of seem to have this mysterious hold over us in some cases where I was one of those little girls who just grew up and it was everything to me, everything to me, it's what I lived for.

Ronald, Jemma please join me in the middle.

Therapeutic Horsemanship of Hawaii is an organization that was founded in the early 80s, here in Hawaiʻi, and its purpose is to partner with horses to sort of use them to bring out improvements in humans.

Up and over with a quickness, like a professional.

The high school that I went to here, required that we do a certain number of hours of community service.

And I actually was a volunteer for this program in 1990, 1991.

I went off to college and when I came back, I missed the horses.

And so I looked the organization up, and it was still around operating under different management.

And so I came back in as a volunteer and just kind of through attrition, eventually became the Executive Director, much to my surprise.

Ronald, please give Kanoa a nice strong walk on.

We offer a couple of different programs involving the horses.

Our main operation is riding sessions and what those are going to look like are typical riding lessons.

However, our focus is not to produce competitive, or even incredibly experienced riders.

Our focus is to use those riding lessons to improve people's well being.

Let’s sit up nice and tall there Ronald.

Good.

So the therapeutic aspects of what we do come across in three different ways.

It can create an emotional improvement, where say a rider has self esteem issues, and suddenly they're sitting on a horse, and they're telling this 1,000 pound animal what to do, it can really create a sense of power.

We can also help with cognitive issues, because learning to ride horses is learning.

But when you add in the horses, it takes out the element of book learning or you know, traditional methods of learning.

So you can actually use the horses to improve cognitive skills without the rider really even knowing that that's what the focus is, they're just riding a horse, right?

But you're actually working to help them with their verbal skills, their social skills, things like that, it can really be helpful in that manner.

The third way is we can actually create improvements in the physical structure of of individuals by putting them on a horse that's moving.

The motion of a horse walking moves the human body through normal walking gait.

And so in the instance where a rider has never walked, they can experience that walking motion.

In the instance where a rider perhaps has a has a gait that's impacted by their disability, it can actually improve their gait.

That's kind of the most complicated version of what we do.

Also, if you've ever ridden a horse, you get sore muscles the next day.

That's improving your muscle tone and your balance and your flexibility and all these other things can really be significantly impacted just by 20, 30 minutes of sitting on horses just walking even.

Looking into the circle.

Very well done Jemma.

Matt Staggs / Instructor, Volunteer Some of the things that make horses really special for therapeutic programs is, their language is so different from ours.

But at the same time, humans and horses have coexisted for so long, that there are ways that we start to learn to communicate with each other.

Teaching our riders what to listen for with our horse, what to pay attention to, and teaching them to not only focus on what their horse is telling them, but what they are telling their horse that they may not realize they're communicating is a very valuable thing.

Very good.

Dana Vennen / Therapeutic Horsemanship of Hawaii Executive Director We usually have specific goals.

The goal may start out as I want this rider to learn how to do posting trot today.

And the actual end of the lesson may just be I got the rider on the horse today.

It's just the nature of the riders we work with is that we're constantly looking out for their health and their happiness rather than am I going to get this skill across to this rider today that is not important to us as much as is this rider feeling better, healthier, happier, at the end of the lesson?

The goal is always going to be safety, and then creating a good lesson even if the lesson wasn't where you were expecting to go in the first place.

I am seven years old and I'm Ronald.

Dee / Ronald’s Mom We had an autism diagnosis a couple years ago, and we have been looking for different programs to improve social skills and to just, a lot of afterschool activities aren't really available to us.

They have different expectations that we may not be able to meet at this time.

Well I chose Dana's program because it has a, it has a very personalized view and you know, the pace.

The lessons is really based on what the rider wants or needs.

It's really comfortable.

And you know, there's no expectations, it's really just treating the horses with respect and learning how to just be around large animals.

Sid is my favorite horse.

Matt Staggs / Instructor, Volunteer Ronald has different needs from some of our other riders and so with him, it's a lot more about taking the lesson and tailoring it to where Ronald's at that day and where he is at, in his progression and growth.

When Ronald started, he wasn't very communicative.

Now we do have him talking more with his horses, which has been wonderful to see.

Dee / Ronald’s Mom It's really good because you you don't think it's possible.

You know, it's, these are large animals, are high up and his focus, his focus is pretty good.

It's much better than I thought it would be.

And it teaches him balance, it teaches him to multitask at the same time, which is a hard skill to learn.

And the fact that he's excited to go every day, you know that he gets up, well, you know, Saturday mornings we could sleep in, but he's excited to come here.

And it's a long drive and so he really enjoys it and, you know, it's a good program.

Jared Watumull / Jemma’s Dad Well, we decided to sign Jemma, Jemma for these lessons because we wanted her to get some experience with animals, get her comfortable with the animals larger than this.

When we started bringing her, how many years, yeah, it was, been many years we've been doing this, she was she was timid around animals.

We've also just heard great things about how for girls horseback riding can build so much confidence and it's just such a great life skill to have.

Matt Staggs / Instructor, Volunteer I've been working with Jemma off and on for I want to say over a year now.

But the growth that I've seen with her is she has gotten more and more confident with her horse.

I remember with her, as with many of our riders, they start very skittish around it and very quiet.

One of the things that I like to teach my riders to do is to speak with confidence to their horse, because if I can hear my rider all the way out in the middle of the arena, then their horse and their horses, big ears can definitely hear them there with them on their back.

And so that's one of the things that I've seen from her.

She's a very quiet kid, and she has started really like speaking more saying what she wants to do with the lesson what she wants to practice.

Jemma Watumull / Student I have a lot of fun at horseback riding.

My favorite part is trotting on the horses.

It's when the horse runs and then and you have to encourage them to keep running until you have to stop.

(horse neigh) Dana Vennen / Therapeutic Horsemanship of Hawaii Executive Director Our horses need to be calm, patient and mentally healthy enough to tolerate all of these riders and benefit them in the end.

So we do spend a lot of time and effort to make sure that our horse herd is as healthy, as happy and as ready to go to work as they possibly can be.

Whoa, girl, that was enthusiastic.

So one rider in particular that we have, right now, in our riding program, this young woman, Kayla, who she's in her early 20s, this is just great personality, good attitude towards everything makes everybody laugh when she's around.

Kayla Adams / Student I look forward to it because it's something that I love doing.

And it makes me happy.

And I enjoy it.

And it brings out my attitude, which is feeling happy.

Dana Vennen / Therapeutic Horsemanship of Hawaii Executive Director She's also in a wheelchair.

So you know, we have our wheelchair mounting ramp, and we're able to get her up and down on that.

And she's just got incredible upper body strength.

So she's able to assist a lot with her mounts and dismounts makes it quite easy.

Kayla Adams / Student I enjoy the connection and the relaxation of how the horse moves.

And it makes me feel like I'm moving with the horse and it makes me feel like I'm walking.

I do like brushing them and then I just like giving them like scratches and stuff to you know, help them relax.

I enjoy it and I'm hoping they enjoy it.

You about ready?

Yeah, I think so.

Dana Vennen / Therapeutic Horsemanship of Hawaii Executive Director So this place takes a lot, takes a lot of effort to keep it going.

And by far, I am not the only person doing this.

Even though we only have one other full time staff member, over 100 hours per week of service are provided by our volunteers, volunteers do everything from scrubbing water buckets, to feeding, to instructing lessons to leading sidewalking and helping with the kids.

We have a really strong community in that way.

To me home means the place where you can be yourself where you get to be as weird, as loud as you want to be and everyone around you, still loves you and accepts you.

And that's really the place that we've tried to create here.

We call ourselves, ourselves a bunch of weirdos and it's true.

And we appreciate everybody's personality quirks as long as that quirk isn't drama.

We have all different types of people here and everyone is welcome to be here as long as they recognize the creed that we will be kind and generous to each other and that to me is home.

Luckily because I spend more time here than anywhere else.

But that is the community I think above and beyond all that we try to make here is that yes it is home and yes you're okay and we will take care of you if you need help and you will help us and we will all appreciate each other for doing that.

Kalaʻi Miller / Home is Here In 2022 Mike Hirao was a semifinalist for the prestigous James Beard Award under the Outstanding Baker category.

If you’re not familiar with his name, he is the third-generation owner of Nisshodo Candy Store on Oʻahu.

This hidden gem has been making pillowy pieces of mochi as well as other Japanese treats by hand for more than a hundred years.

(doorbell) Good morning.

Do you have the mix for chichi dango today?

Ira Fujisaki / Nisshodo Candy Store Customer I've been coming here for about 20, 25 years.

(doorbell) Robert Dodge / Nisshodo Candy Store Customer We've been coming here for as long as I can remember.

Probably 25 years at least.

Michael Hirao / Nisshodo Candy Store Owner Nisshodo Candy Store was started by my grandfather Asataro Hirao who immigrated from Japan in about 1915 or so.

With the rest of the people that immigrated for work on the sugar plantations.

So I think he worked out for a little while on the sugar plantations and decided that probably easier to make mochi.

It started together with his two other friends, Mr. Tasaka and Mr. Baba.

They originally were on Fort Street Mall and later, they decided to go their separate ways.

Mr. Tasaka went to Maui started the guri guri shop.

And Mr. Baba, I don't know what happened to him.

Subsequently my father and his brother ran the store.

After his brother passed away, my father needed help since he was getting on in age.

So I decided to help him.

I took over in 2010 after my career with the bank.

I was with the bank for about 35 years.

Part of my retirement was actually just changing careers, trying to do something a little different.

We initially started as more of a candy company than a mochi company.

We did a lot more of the ame candies, balloon rice.

Unfortunately, we had to cut a lot of that out.

And so you'll see mochi and manju and chichi dango as our base products.

Almost every culture from the Pacific Rim has a form of mochi anyway.

The Chinese have the gau.

The Filipinos have their mochi, Okinawans have their own.

So we're kind of a melting pot.

Luckily we can try everybody else's product.

To me, the significance of mochi is I guess partially a religious one.

They use it a lot in ceremonies, shrines and so on.

We're getting to the end of the year when we do make a lot of the plain pounded mochi, which is using a traditionally used in offerings and soup type of thing.

The process of making mochi is very labor intensive, because we don't incorporate too much of ready made things in our mochi.

The filling is made from scratch, raw azuki beans and lima beans we'll cook that down and grind it into the the bean paste that we fill the mochi with.

We did purchase a machine to manufacture the mochi.

Thing about machines, they're great for long runs.

Not so great on changeovers.

So it became a little easier for us to just wash our hands and wash our utensils.

That's primarily the reason why we do it by hand.

But I think the quality is there.

That's the way my grandfather did it.

That's the way my father did it.

So, nothing wrong with that.

The recipes have changed over the past 100 years.

We have incorporated a little more of the local flavors in our products.

Before it was pretty much just the azuki, the lima.

Now we have things like melon, peanut butter, lilikoi, and all of that.

The changing tastes of our people that come here.

Donna Watson / Nisshodo Candy Store Customer This is like my favorite place to come and stock up.

So, I grew up eating this and it brings back all my childhood memories of growing up in Hawaiʻi because now I live on the mainland.

Andy Debutiaco / Nisshodo Candy Store Customer My wife loves the mochi.

And typically when you get the the mochi in the store, you know, it's not fresh.

Not like here, man, you get it from here just melts in your mouth.

Ira Fujisaki / Nisshodo Candy Store Customer I like them all.

I like the manju I like the mochi I like everything in here and is nothing I don't like.

(laugh) Robert Dodge / Nisshodo Candy Store Customer My wife is from Kauaʻi every time she visits Kauaʻi the first thing they ask for us to bring back is the famous chichi dango.

They love it.

And here's the sad part is we're on our way to the airport now.

I don't think the boxes we just bought are even going to make it because I'll probably polish off half of them but you eat one you can't stop.

Michael Hirao / Nisshodo Candy Store Owner Six days a week, getting up at three in the morning.

And you know, closing out at two o'clock for the public but work still goes on after that.

My staff works very hard.

They'll do the job of maybe two people, sometimes even three.

I really commend them.

I can't find a better crew than what I have now.

I do love the work.

I love the people here.

It's like family.

You wouldn't equate this too much as being home when you have to work at it.

But the people that are here make make it a lot easier.

They're my second family.

I've been asked the question of what would the succession plan be like for Nisshodo from a number of people.

And the straight answer is, I don't know.

We'll try to stay on as long as we can, as long as we're relevant to the community, as long as people walk through our doors.

(doorbell) Kalaʻi Miller / Home is Here When you ask someone to name their favorite subject in school, math might not be their first answer.

Dr. Linda Furuto is working to change that.

Through the ethnomathematics program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, she and her team are empowering educators to take math outside of the classroom and show students the mathematic principles involved in everything from traditional polynesian wayfinding and fishpond construction, to growing kalo and reef conservation.

Janel Marr / Ethnomathematics Graduate Instructor When you ask students what's their favorite class, most will not say math.

I really wanted to become a teacher so that I could impact students in a very positive way.

I chose mathematics for a variety of different reasons.

What's negative one squared?

Anybody?

One, okay, what's half of one?

Point-five.

And what's point five minus two?

I think I had been teaching for about 13 years, I was finding that I was in a slump in my teaching career.

I just wasn't feeling like I was making that connection to where the students were, and then connecting it to the math, they always asked me, Why do I have to learn this?

And sometimes I didn't have an answer for them.

But these types of function with the x squared makes it into a u, a parabola.

Those are called as you can see on your venn diagram, a quadratic function.

2014 I saw an advertisement for a professional development for ethnomathematics.

I was like, What is this?

I'd never heard of it before.

I didn't really know what it was.

But I was really interested in how can I connect more to my students?

Once I heard about it a little bit more.

I was basically all in.

Linda Furuto / Professor of Mathematics Education, UH Mānoa Aloha mai kākou.

My name is Linda Furuto.

I'm currently a professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

I think sometimes people might just see like, Oh, she's a professor of math education, like she was just born that way.

But I wasn't.

I struggle with math within the four walls of the classroom.

But I was in my element, calculating the angle of declination while spearfishing, or riding the sinusoidal curves on my surfboard.

I learned as a little child, that the world is a textbook filled with stories from mauka to makai and that what occurs outside of the classroom is as important as what occurs on the inside.

Ethnomathematics is real world problem solving that is relevant, meaningful, and contextualized.

Janel Marr / Ethnomathematics Graduate Instructor The impact that I saw on my students after going through the professional development was they were really much more engaged and they were excited to learn the math.

There was no longer a question of what and why are we learning this?

They actually saw the connection of why we're learning it.

One of the things that I did with my students was in eighth grade, we learned a lot about linear equations.

So we would learn about slope, and they would understand about how to work with the numbers and everything.

But it wasn't necessarily that they were making a connection and why, why is there slope?

What does it have to do with my real life until I actually connected it to something cultural.

So, we looked at how they would do the sledding in ancient Hawaiian culture.

So, they would take the sled all the way up to the mountain, and then bring it all the way down.

So we looked at actually the slopes of the different mountains, and you can still see the sledding lines on the mountains.

So, I found actual relevant pictures of that.

And we then took those pictures and talked about, well, what would the slope be?

How fast might they be going?

Because slope is really related to the rate of speed.

And so they were really gravitated towards that.

Linda Furuto / Professor of Mathematics Education, UH Mānoa I'm also an apprentice navigator and Education Specialist with the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

To frame the definition of ethnomathematics I like to share a story of Hōkūleʻa.

On the sail around the Samoan islands we were supposed to go to a number of locations, but we weren't able to because we didn't have the winds.

Because of that we returned to Pago Pago a few weeks early and we filled our time visiting schools about 20, elementary, middle and high schools.

And after our presentation on ethnomathematics, voyaging and STEM education at Matatula Elementary School, a young child, maybe seven or eight years old, stood up and said, “Thank you for teaching us what's not written in our textbooks.” I was deeply and profoundly moved, and finally able to respond to this young child faʻafetai tele lava and mahalo nui loa to you tuaa, your kūpuna who had the courage to sail from the Samoan Islands across the vast Pacific.

It's because of you we're here.

It’s because of you were able to sail around the world, you remind us why do we sail and how do we navigate and advocate for change?

Janel Marr / Ethnomathematics Graduate Instructor So being part of ethnomathematics has really grounded me in my Hawaiian ancestry and my heritage.

Really to my mom, who was disconnected in a lot of ways, because of the time that she grew up and how you were looked down upon for being Hawaiian.

So she kind of carried that with her and I was able to have this fill me up in the way that I think my mom would have been really pleased with, she’s no longer with us.

So, by going to places like Kalaupapa and sailing on Hikianalia and seeing this place in a different way.

And then being able to make that connection to the math that's around us, like I had never known about, like the star compass that we learned about when we were sailing and how, you know, you see the stars and everything, but how it guides navigation in the way that the Hawaiians used it.

And then how you can use that to talk about trig functions and the ideas of a unit circle and how you can carry that to your students and make that connection.

When we would go to a loʻi and dig in the mud and be covered up to our waist and falling down and just having a really good time just being with each other experience in a place.

But then to be able to step out of the mud and talk about, you know, what it takes to grow this and the all the math that's part of that.

I love math, and how could I help students to feel that love, and ethnomathematics was a new way to do that a way that I hadn't seen before, that really empowered me to really empower my students to find that love for mathematics, not necessarily to be mathematicians, or to go into that kind of career field.

But just to see that math is in their everyday life, and how it can be a positive thing that they look at.

Linda Furuto / Professor of Mathematics Education, UH Mānoa I love kids because they're the common denominator of our work.

They remind us why we do the things we do.

They remind us that they'll inherit this planet.

And I hope that we can give it to them in a way that will honor the legacies and the knowledge that's been passed down to us so that they will do the same for future generations.

Janel Marr / Ethnomathematics Graduate Instructor It's not just theoretical.

It's having that experience to delve deep into being part of the place and learning about the place and the history and the stories behind it.

That then we can say, hey, I can do this with my own students for whatever place I'm part of, and making those connections for the teachers.

I always tell people, it's what changed my career path.

I always thought I would be always a classroom teacher.

I ended up applying for a district position that I now support teachers then I was asked to return as a key staff and it was the best yes I have ever said.

Linda Furuto / Professor of Mathematics Education, UH Mānoa The fundamental questions about ethnomathematics, and its relationships with learners and life are in the defining moments when the winds shift.

How do we frame our paradigms and practices and adjust our sails accordingly?

Answering these questions to me will open pathways to mathematics and all disciplines.

I tell my students Yes, it's important to understand what's written in our textbooks.

But equally critical is that they understand their ancestors sailed across these vast Pacific oceanic highways by the sun, the moon, the stars, the winds and tides.

While they weren't necessarily called scientists or mathematicians, that's precisely what they did.

To me, the heart of ethnomathematics is identifying and acknowledging and celebrating the strengths and identities of each and every single one of our students, for them to know who they are, where they've come from, and where they're going.

Kalaʻi Miller / Home is Here Thank you for joining us.

For previous episodes and digital exclusive content, go to pbs hawaii dot org.

For Home is Here, I’m Kalaʻi Miller, a hui hou.

Just being around them sometimes can be super beneficial.

They're peaceful, big.

You can tell them all your secrets and they're not gonna tell anybody else.

And in the absolute worst case, if they don't like horses, we got a whole herd of goats for them to hang out with.

Truthfully, no, I don't get tired of eating the mochi.

I may get tired of making it but eating it is always a pleasure.

My journey with math began as a little child through spearfishing for tako and octupus with my dad and uncles on body surfing on the plastic trays from McDonald's.

We returned them, just maybe not in the same condition.