Our vision

To create a world of inspired and empowered learners guided by bold and effective educators.

Hāpara envisions a world in which educators feel safe, confident and hopeful enough to boldly and enthusiastically embrace innovative, effective ways of teaching. We advocate for an approach that gets these passionate, mission-driven professionals back to the why of what motivated them to become educators in the first place.

In our vision, teachers and students learn from one another, and they engage in this learning infused with hope for what they can achieve. Instead of feeling locked into narrow, inhibiting or ineffective ways of doing what they do, everyone feels encouraged – and free – to embrace a greater path.

Our beginnings

After adopting Google Apps for Education in 2010, educators in New Zealand’s Manaiakalani school cluster realized they needed a more effective way of managing learner work in the new digital environment. They collaborated to design a dream tool that would streamline teacher workflow while deepening personalized learning and student engagement.

Their work emphasized a straightforward design that would empower teachers of all technical abilities to track learner progress, provide ongoing feedback, disseminate files and facilitate collaboration and differentiation through flexible groupings. Hāpara (the Māori word for dawn) was born from these efforts in 2011, with the launch of its original Teacher Dashboard.

Today, Hāpara has a range of products built to support educators as they create authentic, personalized learning experiences. We have 2.2 million users in 40+ countries, and in 15% of U.S. medium/large school districts.

Our work is inspired by John Hattie’s research on Visible Learning and by the teachers, administrators and learners we work with every day. With offices in Chicago and Auckland, our team includes school superintendents, school administrators and top-tier educators who are all dedicated to building great products for schools.

Our values

The Hāpara Suite is highly reflective of how we think about learning and its role in creating a better world. Our values lie at the core of our product’s functionality, but more than that they illuminate why we do what we do.

People

Education is a human endeavor, so people will always be the greatest asset in learning. When educators engage more deeply with learners and strengthen connections with them, learning becomes more social. Collaboration and teamwork become second nature and students organically sharpen their relationship skills as they practice sharing and develop empathy. Self-awareness and self-management improve, giving students a more solid foundation to achieve great things.

Empowerment

By empowering educators to empower learners, we inspire students to become involved in their own learning. Having more choice and a stronger voice, they become more motivated, which in turn creates new knowledge and improves student confidence. It also makes learning a more personal experience because students are solving problems they care about and are subsequently more engaged. In this way, learning becomes more sustainable, thus more likely to produce improved outcomes.

Equity

Giving learners a school experience that is more collaborative, engaging and human is an authentic way to nurture social equity. With access and connection, learning becomes ubiquitous, and is more likely to be successful at equipping learners to impact the world in a positive way.

Transparency

Clear and simple visibility into where students and teachers are lies at the core of better education outcomes. Understanding exactly what teachers are doing with their students in the classroom, and what students are actually doing, provides the clarity needed to set goals, collect and analyze metrics and gain insights that can be leveraged to improve the quality of education in sustainable ways.

Technology

We obviously embrace the digital world and its enormous potential to improve education, but we consider it an enabler of effective learning, not a driver. We believe technology should support the human relationships that define educational experiences.

Hāpara is an on-ramp to learning innovation.

In any district, there is a spectrum of teachers in their digital adoption journey. We have the ability to address that spectrum because our suite of robust, flexible tools meets teachers where they are. Teachers can start slow and add more capabilities as they gain confidence and comfort with the vast functionality of the tools.

These are accessible paths for them because the tools can be used in a variety of ways with a variety of intentions. You can start here and go anywhere.

We create pathways to higher-order skills and behaviors, and towards models of student interaction which are in line with what research shows are more positive, long-lasting methods. They drive engagement and, ultimately, better outcomes – both academic and non-academic.

This on-ramp puts the audience on a journey – a shift in mindset. It starts with their initial comfort over having the basic ability to simply shut down tabs. From this limited focus on basic monitoring functionality, teachers move towards the realization that our tools enable them to transform what learning looks like in their classroom.

Our tools encourage and facilitate exploration, collaboration and discussion. The suite offers teachers and students the flexibility, agency, ubiquity and connectedness to work together in a formative way. Teachers go from judge to coach.

In terms of the monitoring function, we approach it from a constructive, relationship-building perspective, not a policing one. Hāpara allows for graduated release of control from the teacher to the student.

Regardless of the function, Hāpara allows educators to see and serve students as individuals rather than a one size fits all group.