Education Resources

Castle Colleagues Program

The Castle Colleagues Program housed at Chaminade University gives site directors a highly practical array of management skills, tools, sources and information. Participants meet in a series of three intensive retreats (usually 3-4 days) on weekdays and weekends. The program is organized to give participants access to peers and resource people they can contact, long after the official course ends.

Session leaders include a wide variety of cross-sector resource people from other Hawaii colleges, as well as foundation trustees, accountants, applied computer and communication experts, and experts within the early childhood field. Castle Colleague alumna, Wendy Stone, teaches in the program as well as advises on course content and other issues. Stone also heads the statewide directors’ association, Kiaikaike, which was founded by graduates of the Castle Colleagues program. This association offers ongoing support for directors, helping them become more influential in their field.

“To move system change, we need better equipped leaders from within the system,” said Al Castle. “Castle Colleagues helps us to affect more children by providing the school directors [with] tools to improve their school’s performance, while acquiring some of the advocacy and public awareness skills to move our early education system forward.”

Castle said that although the course content is strong, it’s the “people connections” that are most important. “The 120 graduates statewide have formed their own alumnae network, and have broken through the barriers to communicating with one another.”

Interested in starting a peer-learning program? Here are some tips for getting started:

Pay attention to what the people in the field want and need. Listen to what they say they want to learn.
Design the program so it’s simple, easy to access and respectful of participants’ time.
Keep ‘red tape’ to a minimum.
Find top-notch instructors from many community venues who are open and approachable, skilled in teaching adults, and who care enough to assist participants in the future as well as during the class if needed.
Finding the right home for the project is key-choose carefully. Such programs should involve cross-sector collaborations, and need a setting that values them.

Please contact Carlynn Wolfe ([email protected]) for more information.

For more than a century, the Samuel N. & Mary Castle Foundation has strived to provide a stronger developmental start for the children of Hawaii. Trustee and Executive Director Al Castle recognized that by giving knowledge, assistance and peer support to those in the early childhood field, the children themselves would benefit.

Castle was involved in helping the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation create the model for a similar program for human service directors, and saw early on that a version for early childhood site directors would be valuable. His fellow Trustees agreed, and Castle Colleagues has now become a signature program of the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation, sparking much interest in both early childhood and philanthropic venues.

Castle Teacher Resource Activity Center

The Castle Teacher Resource Activity Center (C-TRAC) at Chaminade University is to serve as a resource for the local educational community, providing pre-service and in-service teachers with professional development workshops, equipment and supplies to create classroom materials, and professional library with current books and videos. An extension of the Castle Curriculum Resource Center, C-TRAC is funded by a grant from the Samuel N. and Mary Castle Foundation and Chaminade University. The facility is housed in the Education Building on the Chaminade University campus.

C-TRAC equipment may be used without cost and you may bring your own supplies. C-TRAC also sells a variety of consumable supplies at reasonable prices.

Ellison Die Cutter (variety of dies and cut-outs)
Laminator (25 inch lamination)
Book binder
Paper Cutter (will cut posters)
Electric 3-hole punch
Electric stapler
Corner Rounder
Automated label maker
Craft scissors in 20 different shapes
Markers, scissors, glue, etc.
Color printer/copier/scanner
Four computers with software for preview, including:
- Kidspiration
- Image Gallery
- Office Tutorial
- Kidspix

C-TRAC is open to all Chaminade students, staff, and faculty. Community memberships are available for institutions and individuals who serve children, such as private and public schools and after school or enrichment programs. There is no cost for using the equipment and you may bring your own supplies. As a convenience to users, C-TRAC also sells a variety of consumable supplies at reasonable prices.

Because our facility is a workroom housing equipment that poses a safety risk, C-TRAC does not allow children under 16 in the facility.