Koran Munafo is a first year teacher at Radford High School who is joining the ELA department. This is her fourth year teaching at a HIDOE school.

When her students step foot into Dr. Munafo’s classroom, she greets them with a warm welcome as they sign in. With calming study music in the background, she goes over the class agenda before kids quickly get to work. She describes her class as being a place to make a positive impact for students and allowing them a space to grow as an individual and reader.

“Reading has been a foundation in my life since I was four, when I first learned to read watching Sesame Street,” said Dr. Munafo, who followed that by stating, “That’s what made me want to teach ELA—so students can hopefully experience that same sense of empowerment.”

Dr. Munafo’s teaching experience started ten years ago at Hawai‘i Community College. Afterwards, she provided academic coaching to student athletes at U.H. Mānoa.

“For the past five years, I have been adjunct faculty at Windward Community College as well as an instructor of educational technology for a distance learning-based, state-approved teacher education program based on the Big Island,” she said.

After the COVID-19 lockdown, she began teaching high school and has been in the classroom since.

“If I can help them build confidence and discover the power of reading and writing in their own lives, I’ll feel like I’ve made a real impact,” Dr. Munafo states.

Additionally, she describes how her expectations of teaching continue to grow as she explains how teaching involves working with and in support of the complexity of every student.

Dr. Munafo enters her first year at Radford High school in hopes to find a new teaching environment she can contribute to on island. She states, “I’ve found Radford to be a great fit and a place I can see myself staying long-term.”