The Hawaii State Teachers' Association has long wrestled with its seemingly divergent role of being a union and a professional association.

While our detractors might see these roles as mutually exclusive, this duality of purpose provides HSTA the best opportunity to serve as an effective agent in improving education in Hawai'i.

As the exclusive bargaining agent for Hawai'i's 13,000 public school teachers, HSTA has the ability to serve as a conduit of information from every classroom statewide. This access allows us to determine if the needs and issues that arise in one area of the state are an aberration, a relatively isolated occurrence, or part of a greater picture.

In this way, we can address each situation in the most appropriate and effective manner possible.

An example of how this information can be used is seen in the development of a pilot course that focuses on working with economically disadvantaged students. As our teachers tirelessly work to meet state and federal testing demands, consistent success with this group of students has remained elusive.

As a result of our being able to identify this trend, leaders and staff of HSTA's Leeward Chapter were able to secure a grant that supports teacher training based on the work of educator and author Ruby Payne. It is our hope that from this pilot program, successful strategies that can be shared statewide will emerge.

This same model has been used for working with our newly hired teachers, for assisting teachers in expanding classroom management strategies, and for developing leadership skills that will ultimately benefit the schools in which our teachers work.

In every school and chapter throughout the state, examples of HSTA's efforts for improving education abound. As a professional association, our challenge must be to better coordinate, communicate and expand these efforts so that our members can build on the synergy of the collective rather than continue to reinvent wheels they could easily borrow from each other.

As a union, however, our challenge must be seen in a different light. The effect of every educational decision is felt within the walls of our classrooms where both our teachers and their students serve as front-line correspondents.

If improving education truly matters, then HSTA must be able to amplify the voices of our members, and we must be able to exert our collective power as educational experts.

We cannot allow our members to be silenced, or their issues summarily dismissed. On the contrary, HSTA must do everything in its power to raise the voice of teachers because it is that voice, the one least heard, that will help us best understand what works and what doesn't in the place that matters most — the classroom.

It's time for our members, with their wealth of knowledge, expertise and experience, to take their rightful place as partners in education.

Only through our willingness to maximize our potential as a professional association while simultaneously standing together in the highest ideals of unionism will we be able to make this a reality.

The roughly 13,000 members of the Hawaii State Teachers Association are in the middle of an election to select a president who will lead the organization for the next three years. Ballots are due on April 25 and results will be announced May 6.

The candidates are incumbent president Roger Takabayashi and Joan Lewis, a Kapolei High School teacher who is now a union vice president. And while the election is of greatest interest to union members, everyone concerned about public education should have an interest in HSTA leadership. HSTA teachers directly affect the education of the state's 182,000 public school students.

The two candidates were asked to write brief essays addressing the question: What can the HSTA do, specifically, to improve education as defined as the interaction between a teacher and student in the classroom? Here are their responses.