On Dec. 14 Golden Roots, a student edu-prize from different pathways within Career Technical Education, returned to sell t-shirts, taro butter mochi, ‘ōlena lemonade and butter chicken with turmeric rice during McKinley High School winter craft fair.
It first started when MHS history teacher Jonathan Loomis’ wife, a 4th grade teacher from Ka’iulani Elementary School, who is involved with a program with Hawaii Agricultural Foundation. Loomis was growing ‘Ōlena, also known as turmeric, which can grow fast. The teacher soon reached out to Hawai’i Agriculture Foundation and they put her in touch with us. Mara Kaizawa, the CTE coordinator, helps with coordinating Golden Roots and runs the meetings with the student executive board.
Kaizawa said that students from Future Farmers of America process the ‘Ōlena into a powder able to dye t-shirts; students from Graphic Technology create the designs to print on the shirt, the packaging and any labels or tags for the shirts while also making the merchandise; Family Career and Community leaders of America (FCCLA) were in charge of turning the ‘Ōlena into a food product; and Finance Managment students are in charge of creating the business plan and doing all the finances.
“It simulates a real marketplace in a sense, and being able to work with the students from the different pathways has been really rewarding,” Kaizawa said.
Jewel Ann Sophia Cortez (c/o ‘26), a messenger between the Tiger Media Learning Center Academy and Golden Roots project, was first recruited when she signed up for the CTE honors project. Kaizawa, being a part of it, offered Cortez to join. Cortez said it is hard to make the project her first focus because of how busy she is as an academic person, being a part of many other extracurriculars.
Despite this, Cortez said it is fun working with the other messengers. Being in the same age group and having the same responsibilities, they all understand how busy each other is.
“It’s really a great way to be able to see from everyone’s perspectives because of how different we are from backgrounds and academies,” Cortez said.
Photo by Cheska Orias (c/o ‘26)
As Graphic Tech is in charge of making and producing the designs, there were four companies trying to be the one chosen for their designs. Cortez said the design’s target audience are McKinley alumni, but other requirements were it had to give an “Aloha Hawaiian” feel to it. Kaizawa along with the other messengers all had to come together to choose one company to be the main look of the project.
“Everyone’s designs were really great,” Cortez said.
Last year during the month of April outside of T4, a student-run business called “Golden Roots” sold ‘Ōlena sorbet along with hand dyed shirts. Kaizawa said the first year they did Golden Roots efficiency and quality were their biggest challenges, along with students working on the project having other extracurriculars outside of Golden Roots, with the Graphic Tech people being the only ones that have school class time to work on it. Yet, the team persevered and continued on with the project.
“Being able to work through them and see the finish line is really nice,” Kaizawa said.
Taizo Yamagata (c/o ‘27) and Liam Choy (c/o ‘26), the messengers for the culinary students, have main role in the project to create the food products. They had other ideas for food such as taro chips, a pie and taro mondu.
Choy said it is interesting to work with people he does not have classes with.
“It’s really interesting to be able to see people outside my own personal bubble,” Choy said.
Kaizawa said she knows it seems like a lot of work, but believes working on Golden Roots is able to offer the students a real world experience that they normally would not get in a classroom.
“How many classrooms are actually going through from start to finish, selling a product,” Kaizawa said. “I know a lot of them started it because of the thought that they could fundraise for their organizations, or their CTSOs, but I think [Golden Roots] expanded a little bit more from that in terms of what the students get out of it.”
Kaizawa said if Golden Roots was a true business, with all the little challenges they had, the students would have been let go. But since it isn’t, it’s okay to make mistakes.
“As long as we can learn from them,” Kaizawa said.
Cortez said it is a great opportunity for everyone. Cortez was able to get to know the process behind the Golden Roots project. Before Cortez joined, she thought they just bought yellow shirts to print on before learning they get actual ‘ōlena from an elementary school.
“It was such a fun experience, just finally being able to see what it truly is to work in a company,” Cortez said.
Kaizawa said the students from Ka’iulani Elementary School do get to see the final product, as last year they were able to bring the students who grew the ‘ōlena to McKinley. She got feedback from the teacher that the students were very excited about seeing the final product, along with learning about some of the various processes, wanting to join some of the classes that were part of it.
“Just to be able to do it in the first place, like each pathway is able to produce this product, but not only that, but to work with other students, work with other teachers, to accomplish this great thing–it simulates a real business,” Kaizawa said.
