Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — Sabrina Suluai-Mahuka, an English & Creative Writing Teacher at Samoana High School, has been recognized through a 2022 Educator Innovation Award for creatively teaching students about climate change and empowering them to be stewards of our blue planet. She was American Samoa’s 2021 Teacher of the Year.

The Educator Innovation Award is presented by Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Programs, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit whose mission is to engage youth in ocean conservation and advocacy through the arts.

“Bow Seat is thrilled to recognize educators who provide hands-on, interdisciplinary environmental learning opportunities for their students,” said Linda Cabot, founder and president of Bow Seat. “By using the Contest as a teaching tool, our Educator Innovation Award winners taught their students about the climate crisis and engaged them in creative action. We are thrilled to have educators like Sabrina as a member of our global community, and we respect the incredible work she does to ignite her students’ curiosity, encourage their creativity, and open their eyes to their own power to affect change.”

 “My students shared that, coming from a minuscule island, they didn’t feel like they stood a chance at competing on a global level,” said Sabrina. “I told them that the size of our island does not dictate the limitations of our voices. As an Asian Pacific Islander, I have so much pride in my roots, and I am beyond happy to have the opportunity to represent my island, my people, and my culture.”

American Samoa is vastly impacted by the detrimental effects of climate change — rising sea levels, harsh weather conditions, coral bleaching, and more. The Contest was a positive way for Sabrina’s students to learn more about this issue, to voice their feelings about what climate change means to them, and to share their community’s needs through creative expression. Sabrina collaborated with advisors from a local environmental youth leadership organization to provide feedback on the first drafts of the students’ work, and she engaged her students in two coastal clean-ups so that they could see first-hand the effects of pollution in their community.

BACKGROUND

Bow Seat’s flagship educational program— the Ocean Awareness Contest —invites youth to learn about and explore the connections between human activities and the health of our ocean through visual and performing arts, creative writing, film, and multimedia.

Since 2011, nearly 30,000 students from over 130 countries and all 50 U.S. states have participated in the Contest. Bow Seat has awarded more than $625,000 in scholarships to help advance teens’ creative talents and passion for the environment, as well as to educators who use the program as a tool to teach students about conservation issues, apply classroom learning to real-world problems, and build students’ research and communication skills.

Visit bowseat.org for more information about Bow Seat’s programs, educational resources, and global collection of student artwork.

The 2023 Ocean Awareness Contest, “CLIMATE HROES IN ACTION,” is open now through June 13, 2023, to students ages 11-18 worldwide.

(Source: Bow Seat Ocean Awareness Programs press release)