In 2013 Parker Sawyer, a sixth-grade math teacher at Kaohao Public Charter School in Kailua, volunteered to be in charge of the school garden.

He had zero experience gardening.

But 10 years later, the school has gardens for nearly every class, an award-winning zero-waste program, hot compost piles and worm bins, the start of an agroforest on campus, and a thriving project-based science program that has gotten kids stoked on sustainability.

Oh, and he also converted an old shipping container into a space where kids jam on guitars and drums during recess.

All thanks to Sawyer, who’s been teaching at Kaohao School for more than 20 years and was named the 2024 Hawaii Charter School Teacher of the Year and a finalist for Hawaii State Teacher of the Year, which was announced on Tuesday. (Leilehua High’s Jackie Freitas will represent Hawaii in the National Teacher of the Year program in the spring.)

“Mr. Sawyer is a once-in-a-lifetime teacher who truly loves his students and will do anything he can to develop meaningful relationships with each child in his class,” says Keoki Fraser, the school’s director. “He’s a teacher who empowers you to solve real-world problems and to teach and let you experience sustainability practices to help our environment … He’s the kind of teacher who cares about you more than he does about the math work you are learning.”

It’s recess at Kaohao School, and kids are heading to a converted shipping container outfitted with guitars, a keyboard, two drum kits and stand microphones. One of the school custodians straps on an electric bass and sits on a stool. Sawyer grabs an acoustic guitar. The kids — all sixth graders — start playing an original song about sustainability.

This happens every day at recess, sometimes at lunch. Most of these kids have never touched an instrument before. Sawyer — and other staffers — teach them whatever they know. The band’s drummer, who kept the beat and even riffed a little, picked up drumsticks for the first time only three weeks ago.

This so-called School of Rock started three years ago, when two of Sawyer’s students were having trouble in school. He found out they both liked music and invited them to jam with him during recess in his classroom. He brought a guitar and bass guitar from home for the kids. It just grew from there — and now the class is talking about starting a café in the courtyard.

Because, as these sixth graders have learned from their math teacher, no idea is a bad idea.

“I love the constant learning,” Sawyer says, sitting in his classroom, which is filled with science books, equipment and students’ project ideas written on notecards and tacked to the wall.

In 2013, when he volunteered to take over the school garden, which wasn’t much at the time, Sawyer went all in, enrolling in the rigorous GoFarm Hawaii, a statewide farmer training program. He meant to just spend a couple of months learning about farming and wound up, over the course of almost five years, completing the program and managing a ½-acre plot of land in Waimanalo, where he grew and sold lettuce, beans, kale, sweet potatoes and bananas.

That experience has sprouted — literally — across the campus. There are garden beds everywhere, several maafala ulu (breadfruit) trees that produce about 400 pounds of fruit a year and two groves of flourishing banana trees. He’s planning an agroforest, growing more ulu trees and mamaki, with uala (sweet potato) and kalo (taro) in the understory. His students will be taking the lead on this project.

There are also dozens of hot compost piles and vermicomposting bins, all of which are, in some way, managed by the students. The kids collect and shred cardboard and paper for worm bin bedding, and food waste from the cafeteria, where they also wash their own dishes, for nitrogen. In six months, when a batch of nutrient-rich vermicast is ready, the younger kids participate in something called Search and Rescue; the soil is dumped into inflatable kiddie pools and the kids pick out stray worms and other bugs.

Older students screen the vermicast and brew vermicast tea, which is used as a soil drench and foliar spray. The medium-grade compost is used to enrich the gardens, landscape and lawn at the school; the extra is packed in old plastic ice cream containers that are sold to the community. (All of the money generated goes right back into the program.)

The hot compost piles are closely monitored by the students, who record how much food and mulch are added and the temperature of each pile. Decomposition in a compost pile is powered by heat. It takes about a year for the compost to be ready. The students build 12 of these hot compost piles every year, diverting over six tons of food waste from the waste stream.

The goal? Zero waste — and Kaohao School is doing it. Everything, from food scraps to old math tests, are composted.

In 2016 the school won the Environmental Protection Agency’s Food Recovery Challenge, a national award. But that’s not why Sawyer does this. He wants to really drive home the school’s mission of preparing students to meet life’s challenges and be compassionate stewards of the future.

“We want (the students) to realize what they bring to campus,” Sawyer says. “Everything you do and bring has a cost.”

He challenges his sixth-grade students to think about solutions to real-life problems. Each student works on his or her own project — though they are encouraged to collaborate with classmates when it makes sense — for the whole school year. The ideas fall into four categories: water, energy, food and waste. Projects range from propogating ulu trees on campus to building chicken coops. One year students discovered, by studying data, that the solar panels on the school’s roof weren’t working, so the school had them removed.

“You know they’re hooked when they’re coming to school early to see if their seeds have germinated or when it starts raining and they run out to check their catchment systems,” Saywer says with a smile. “We want them to have something to look forward to every day.”

According to the 2021-22 Strive HI School Performance Results, 77% of Kaohao’s 341 students are meeting the standard or are proficient on state assessments in science, compared to 45% statewide. And, maybe more importantly, a majority of the students reported a positive school climate.

“I just wanted to create a day that I would enjoy if I were a student,” Sawyer says.

I’d say he’s accomplished that — and more.

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.