COURTESY PHOTO
Kualapuu Elementary School teacher Dara Lukonen, right, declined a Maui District Teacher of the Year award because her teaching partner, Victoria Newberry, left, was not included.
WAILUKU >> Dara Lukonen said she doesn't mean to offend anyone, but she just can't accept the award as Maui District Teacher of the Year. Molokai elementary teacher
says no to state award
By Gary T. Kubota
gkubota@starbulletin.comAlong with the state Department of Education award would have come $500 and the free use of a new car for a year. If she had won the statewide title, she could have received another $1,000. The state winner is to be announced on Oct. 17.
Lukonen, a teacher at Kualapuu Elementary School on Molokai, said she turned down the award because it could not be jointly shared with her team teacher Victoria Newberry.
Allen Ashitomi, superintendent for Molokai schools, said by the time Lukonen pulled out of the competition, it was too late to select another Maui District Teacher of the Year.
Ashitomi said the competition feeds into a national program sponsored by the Council of Chief State School Officers, in partnership with Scholastic Inc., and that the state officials on Maui were unable to change the rules to make room for team teachers. Ashitomi said many teachers work in teams, but there are few awards recognizing team efforts.
Lukonen, 41, who has taught at the school for 13 years, said she had hoped school officials would select someone else after she turned down the award.
"I'm not thumbing my nose at it," she said. "It just seems wrong to accept something that recognizes one of us and not the other."
"It's not about us as individuals anymore. It's like a team," she added. "It wasn't my intention to take anything from other teachers who accepted the award. I had hope it would go unnoticed, to be honest."
Newberry said she was not surprised by Lukonen's stance. "It's what I would have said," Newberry said.
Lukonen said she and Newberry have taught two classrooms of fifth- and sixth-graders for the past six years. At the school their classrooms are adjacent to each other. This year they have 34 students.
About 75 to 80 percent of their students are Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian who live on Hawaiian homesteads at Hoolehua or in the former pineapple plantation town of Kualapuu.
Lukonen said for team teaching to succeed, both teachers must give up individual recognition and create an energy where there is a free exchange of ideas, without any one person claiming credit for them.
"Sometimes, we exchange ideas so much, we don't know who brought up the idea," Lukonen said. "It doesn't matter who came up with the idea anyway. I think we're good teachers by ourselves, but I think we're much better teachers together."
She said their team-teaching style also instructs students on how to work together because they see firsthand how two teachers try to blend as a team.
"When we have our moments and it's not going smoothly, it gives them a model for working out their difference in a positive professional way," Lukonen said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
State Department of Education
