Program
About the Program
Pono Outdoor Program is a nature-rooted learning experience for keiki on the island of Maui. We meet Monday through Thursday from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM, and Fridays from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM, in various nomadic outdoor locations across the island. We currently have no fixed headquarters, allowing us the freedom to explore and learn directly from the diverse environments around us.
Our program takes place 100% outdoors — rain or shine — supporting deep connection to the ‘āina, the elements, and each other through immersive, hands-on experiences rooted in curiosity and relationship.
We follow a seasonal rhythm, with our summer break running from June 1, 2025 through August 3, 2025. Our next session begins August 4, 2025.
Our Philosophy
At Pono Outdoor Program, we believe the greatest value of gathering outdoors is to give our keiki the freedom to play and socialize as nature intended. We honor each child’s unique rhythm, gifts, and interests — and we create space for them to express who they are without pressure or comparison.
Through playfulness, keiki are naturally self-directed in exploring their own questions. This fosters autonomy, intrinsic motivation, self-discipline, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and healthy social negotiation. When we trust the keiki in their individual paths of learning, they begin to trust themselves — cultivating the roots of healthy self-esteem, joy, and confidence as they grow into adulthood.
As Peter Gray explains in Free to Learn,
“Play is exploratory, open-ended, and interest-based learning, as opposed to forced studies where the actions towards a goal (i.e., getting a good grade on a test) are merely the means to an end while taking the shortest possible route to that goal” (Gray, Free to Learn, p. 143).
“Children’s innate instinctive drives for survival and educating themselves to thrive as humans are curiosity, playfulness, and sociability” (Gray, Free to Learn, p. 114).
We hold this truth at the center of our program.
A Private Educational Association
Pono Outdoor Program is a nature-based, child-led learning community based on the island of Maui. We operate as a Private Educational Association (PEA) — a lawful, member-based organization that is not a public or state-regulated institution.
As a PEA, we are protected under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which allows us to self-govern and create our own structure, curriculum, and community values — free from government mandates or standardized requirements.
This unique framework allows us to offer a truly alternative, child-centered educational experience. Our program is rooted in Hawaiian values, cultural practices, nature immersion, emotional intelligence, and real-life skills. Learning is driven by curiosity, play, and relationship — not tests or rigid timelines.
We believe in honoring the whole child, meeting each keiki where they are developmentally, emotionally, and spiritually. By trusting in their natural path of learning, we support them in developing autonomy, joy, confidence, and self-awareness.
“Children’s innate instinctive drives for survival and educating themselves to thrive as humans are curiosity, playfulness, and sociability.”
— Peter Gray, Free to Learn
Becoming a member in our Association is by private invitation and agreement, and reserved for families who align with our mission and values. As part of membership, there is a monthly member contribution which supports the operation of our program and the growth of our intentional learning ‘ohana. All details, policies, and expectations are shared during the family interview and enrollment process.
By joining Pono Outdoor Program, you become part of a like-minded, sovereign community that values educational freedom, connection to the land, and the honoring of each child’s unique learning journey.
We are not just offering an alternative to traditional education —we are reclaiming it.
Self-directed learning
How We Learn
At Pono Outdoor Program, we believe children learn best when they are free to explore the world through play, curiosity, and meaningful connection. While nature is our classroom and learning happens all day through lived experience, it is our kuleana (responsibility) to create a literacy-filled and numeracy-rich environment that naturally supports skill development.
We offer invitations and resources that spark curiosity and provide opportunities for keiki to engage in real-life practices across a wide range of learning areas:
reading, writing, math, science, social studies, language, visual and performing arts, physical skills, and what we call "thriving skills."
Rather than separating these into rigid subjects, we recognize how they all interweave naturally — just like in life. We trust that keiki will gravitate toward what excites them and honor their inner timing, without judgment or pressure.
Thriving skills — as we prefer to call them — are commonly known as "survival skills." These include fire-making, shelter building, water purification, knife safety, food foraging, herbal medicine, tool use, hunting, and regenerative farming. These are not only practical skills, but they empower our keiki to thrive in any environment with confidence and connection to the land.
Our Daily Rhythm
Each day is guided by three non-negotiable community pillars that all keiki participate in:
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Morning Circle – A time to gather, ground, set intentions, and share voice in community.
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Lunch Circle – A shared mealtime that nurtures connection, care, and gratitude.
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Hoʻoponopono – A daily practice of resolving conflict, restoring balance, and building emotional intelligence in the Hawaiian way.
These anchors provide rhythm and reinforce our core values: indigenous wisdom, circle culture, health, pono (balance, righteousness), and community.
Between these pillars, the day flows with freedom, exploration, and open-ended learning, inspired by the interests of the keiki and the wisdom of the land.
3 Daily Pillars
Why we choose not to follow a curriculum
At Pono Outdoor Program, we value diversity and recognize that each child is at their own pace and carries their own set of interests. Only a small portion of students will be perfectly ready for a particular lesson in a set curriculum, while the majority of their peers are either pressured to keep up or held back and limited, both of which give them the message that they’re not good enough where they are.
Curriculum is in its origin a standard for slavery in the industrial revolution so that everyone knows the same limited information needed for the conveyor belt factory system, most importantly the inability to think for oneself. Schools are often compared to prisons as the only two institutions where the free will (human right) to opt-out is forbidden. A set curriculum also promotes age segregation, which leads to more bullying and less true learning. The no child left behind act of 2001 (passed in 2014) pushed the requirement of “Common Core”, a set standard for all students to gain proficiency in the exact same subjects. The goal of the Common Core is to have an education that is like training robots, everything the same way, everyone has the same knowledge; leading to a “excellent” education because everyone can be able to do slave work. Ultimately feeding the elite more money, through our work.
“Proficiency, comes from the Latin word proficere, meaning "accomplish, make progress, be useful." If you have achieved proficiency in something, you have done well at gaining a skill. The 4 levels of proficiency are 1 - Fundamental Awareness (basic knowledge) 2 - Novice (limited experience) 3 - Intermediate (practical application) 4 - Advanced (applied theory)”
We can help children to achieve proficiency through self-directed learning without common core in the skills they need. Extensive research has shown that children actually learn reading, writing, and math naturally in our modern society where literacy and numeracy are so prevalent. The skill of literacy is acquired at vastly differing ages, with the average being 8 years old. Decades of case studies at self-directed learning centers, such as Sudbury Valley (established 1968) have found not a single case of illiteracy among their students despite no formal reading instruction; the ages for learning to read varied from 4 to 14 years old and often times siblings differed greatly in this regard. These case studies also show that starting to read later (10 years and older) does not hold students back from academic success and some indeed go on to become scholars (Gray, Psychology Today). Furthermore, for math skills, it has been found time and time again that 7 years of math standards in school (kindergarten through 6th grade) can be learned by students in an average of only 20 hours when they are motivated and have a reason to learn it (Greenberg, Free at Last).
