Given the growing global environmental threats, shifts to increasingly binary thinking that isolate and polarize discourse, and the erosion of caring for each other and our places, the authors believe it is imperative that we change the way science and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education connect with communities and are taught in school. As part of the larger study, this paper explores how the integration of STEMS[superscript 2] Pedagogy with community based problem solving (re)shapes two case-study teachers' learning environments and serves as a tool to facilitate decolonizing STEM education by addressing the research question. Research question: How does the integration of community-based problem-solving and STEMS[superscript 2] Pedagogy impact how the case study teachers think about STEM education and the design of STEM curriculum? Drawing from longitudinal critical ethnographic case studies and Hawaiian hermeneutics frameworks, two public school educators (co-authors), we collected data between Fall 2017 to Fall 2021. The inductive analysis process described above resulted in two key claims: (1) Grounding STEM instruction in place strengthens sense of place and kuleana; and (2) Strengthening one's sense of "kuleana" changes the measure of success.