ILC VP Builds Relationships
« View All ArticlesThe four-day conference took place in Honolulu, Hawaii from Oct. 25-28
The Indigenous Learning Company’s (ILC) Walter Schwabe, Manager, Business Development, spent a week in beautiful Honolulu, Hawaii recently at the National Indian Education Association’s (NIEA) annual conference.
Schwabe attended the conference not only to network and build relationships, which he did in spades, but more importantly to learn.
“This was a very well attended conference with Tribal organizations, post-secondary institutions and educational vendors represented from across the U.S.,” Schwabe said. “This afforded ILC the chance to make strong connections with educators, non-profits, vendors, Tribal leaders and many others.
“The setting was terrific and our Native Hawaiian hosts were some of the nicest, most pleasant and passionate people (about their culture and language) I’ve ever met.”
During the four-day conference, which included talks, workshops, a tour of a Kamehameha School — the largest private school in the U.S. — and a Powwow during one of the last evenings, Schwabe had plenty of time to meet and talk with people in the hopes of building relationships and potential business partners for ILC.
One of the companies that Schwabe met with in Hawaii was Read Right — a company that’s produced a learning system that enables students with reading problems to improve their reading skills and eliminate their problems.
Schwabe was able to meet with Jason Campbell, Business Development, and one of the owners of Read Right Systems, Tom Brown, at the conference.
“We had a great conversation and I was able to understand more about their process, where the company is going and the success they’ve had when deploying their program,” Schwabe said. “As a result of the time spent together in Hawaii, ILC and Read Right are discussing a preliminary agreement that should eventually see our two companies integrate our collective capabilities into ILC’s web-based learning materials.
“This means that children will not only be using the latest in technology and teaching pedagogy to learn about their cultures, histories and contributions, they’ll also in many cases, be learning to read based on a highly successful set of core principles provided by the Read Right system.”
One of the many highlights of the conference was the full day tour of Kamehameha School — one of three such schools in the state. Aaron K. Mersberg, Senior Project Analyst for Kamehameha Schools and member of the Royal Order Of Kamehameha led the tour.
Schwabe was thoroughly impressed with the school, the campus and especially the students and he said there could be an opportunity to partner with the school in some fashion and develop Hawaiian focused web-based learning applications.
“I’d like to talk more about preserving the Hawaiian language,” Schwabe said. “A new 21st century language preservation project that doubles simultaneously as a curriculum based, culturally specific set of comprehensive web-based learning materials like none other in Hawaii could engage this and future Native Hawaiian generations to further the goal of preserving this distinct culture while showcasing its proud people and their contributions throughout history.”
Another relationship forged out of the conference was that of ILC and the Lumbee Tribe through the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
Schwabe met a representative from the university at the NIEA conference, Jackie Clark, and plans on following up on their conversations.
“The Lumbee Tribe has come a long way on the education front since those first 166 students in 1909 (the year the very first school opened in its present location),” Schwabe said. “The goal of continuing our discussions would be to ultimately lead to a project preserving the Lumbee Tribal language.”
From teachers to tekkies and students to superintendents, Schwabe met them all at the NIEA Conference and the ILC VP has a lot of work ahead of him to ensure that those relationships grow into successful partnerships.
Stay tuned.