Free Blog

In the past (as in, during teacher’s ed), I’ve enjoyed these free topic blog posts because I’m constantly experiencing things that make me think, I need to share this with the class.  I like it cus it’s fun and I get to talk about whatever I want while still getting credit for it.   These days, I’m experiencing less of these sharable moments.  I only have one in recent memory I thought I wanted to share with the group.

This is something that happened at bowling practice one day.  I am lucky enough to be a part of a staff that doesn’t really have a “restriction” on who we are teaching.  We have three teams (varsity, JV black and JV red).  Technically my title is head JV coach, which means my primary responsibility is the black team.  The fun thing is that every one of our staff feels free to coach everyone, we’re not limited to our “own kids”.  One of these days I was watching the team as a whole and noticed one of the bowlers (kid A) having issues so I started to give him advice.  While I was doing this, the others were listening in and one of them (kid B) started chiming his own two cents.  Mind you kid B has had a total of 3 months of bowling experience under his belt, so, even though I liked the fact that they’re collaborating and helping each other, I was quick to point out that one of us has more experience and should probably listen to me (since the two cents kid B offered was completely wrong).  The rest of the conversation went like this:

Kid A: But Panda, he’s my Tutu

Me: …he’s your grandmother?

Kid A: No, no…what’s teacher?

Me: Kumu.

Kid A: Oh yeah, that.

Kid B: …I thought that was humu?

Me: That’s a fish…and not even its full name.

Kid B: Oh yeah…

First I thought, that’s hilarious.  Second I thought, wow, these kids have almost no useable Hawaiian knowledge.  Is that what we were talking about this whole time, how a lot of students have zero real connection to the place they’re from when they go through their schooling career?  It made me kinda sad, that these are the kind of people who spread their limited and incorrect local knowledge to the rest of the world.  Probably why we as local people watched the re-made Hawai’i Five-0 for a little while, laughed at all the mistakes and fake pidgin accents then stopped watching cus it ended up irritating us (my experience).  I mean, recently I was reading an article in Guns & Ammo about a hunting trip the writer took to Maui.  He wrote about his fondness for the “authentic” luau he attended at some touristy establishment and how they slow roast pigs in underground pits.  He couldn’t even write imu, although it’s probably best he didn’t because his next statement was that while he was searching possible hunts to take while in the islands he’d found a guide to take him on a pua hunt.  I sat there thinking to myself, …you’re going flower hunting?

These two occurrences merged into one when I came to a thought about the importance of place-based or cultural-based learning we’re experiencing in this program.  Yes, this style of learning is largely beneficial to someone like me or to the others in our program and to many of the future students we’ll have as educators.  But that very thought of, “These kids are going to go to school in the mainland after high school and spout off so many inaccurate statements about being “Hawaiian” made me wonder about the goals of certain students’ education.  The students I’m in contact with attend a college prep school, the goal of their education being preparing them for college.  A lot of students to end up going to UH: Mānoa, like I did, but for the majority of the class, the next level of education happens at some other school on the continental United States.  I’m going to irritate people when I say, this stuff we’re learning is important but I can see why for some people they just won’t care because it’s not the goal of their education.  The goal of some people is to not be members of the culture we have here in this place.  Personally, I value the place/cultural-based education facet of learning.  Being from this place, I wanted to know more about the culture and history of Hawai’i.  I took the Hawaiian history and culture classes offered at ‘Iolani.  I took a year of Hawaiian language at UH for fun, even though I’m awful at learning languages and my degree had zero language requirements.  I bought and read books about Hawaiian mythology, even though I hate reading.  It’s important and interesting for me because I’m from here, I’m a part of this place.  Knowing more enlightens my being here and allows me to see things from various perspectives.  That’s just me, everyone’s different; apparently, especially people from the same school as me.