After a successful high school experience, Cheryl Hara Taitague graduated from Kaimuki with a promise-filled future. Well, she did not disappoint! She dedicated her professional life to improving the education of young children from Hawai‘i, Guam and all through the Pacific region. With widely diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, these children present unique challenges to educators. Without effective strategies and methods, many children from this region often struggle to achieve literacy and learning at rates of other children. Helping educational institutions and teachers to be effective educators often requires leveraging these cultural components and incorporating them into effective classroom teaching strategies and methods. As an education specialist and researcher with nonprofit Pacific Resource Education and Learning (PREL), Cheryl has worked research and development of computer-based learning products that give teachers novel and effective teaching tools.
Cheryl was a cited researcher in three studies that demonstrate the innovative work that PREL has done to develop new literacy and learning methods. The first was the creation of the Zip Zoom English suite of software products. Targeted for English learners in kindergarten, Zip Zoom English is a culturally relevant and age-appropriate product. Tested by 7,500 students and teachers in the U.S. and U.S.-affiliated Pacific jurisdictions, it has been proven effective at building English-language learners’ early phonemic awareness, phonics and sight-word recognition skills. Cheryl has also been involved in research in leveraging the popularity of computer games with children into new approaches to teaching vocabulary. She contributed to the development of Cosmos Chaos, a Nintendo-based game for vocabulary training. Finally, Cheryl’s research in teaching reading to reluctant and struggling readers in Hawai‘i contributed to the development of E Ho‘omau (to persevere; to learn from the past, and perpetuate the good) a PREL web-based resource that contains a series of visually rich and engaging supplemental programs that integrate animated versions of classic Hawaiian stories with accompanying graphic novels and science-focused text sets, designed to foster literacy, science and culture.
As high school students, many of us never thought much of the impact of the education we were receiving toward our future. However, Cheryl’s positive contributions to the education of young children of Hawai‘i and the Pacific region are a legacy that will continue far into their future. Cheryl left Kaimuki as a good student and became an even better one in life.
