Hawaii Teacher: Our Kids Need A Better Foundation To Become Future Leaders
Editor’s Note: Our “Hawaii Teacher” column returns today with a new contributor. Michael Wooten is a former sergeant in the U.S. Army and University of California Berkeley graduate who came to Hawaii as a Teach For America teacher in 2008. He earned his masters degree in education from the University of Hawaii and currently teaches English and film at James Campbell High School in Ewa Beach.
The first day of class, I always meet students at the door with a firm handshake and a look in the eye, then I give a PowerPoint on myself.
I tell them about where I鈥檓 from and what my passions are. I talk about my experience boxing while in the Army, driving cross-country to live in LA, getting in to Berkeley even though I didn鈥檛 do well in high school, and being accepted to Teach For America, which brought me here to Hawaii to teach for two years 鈥 five years ago.
But I don鈥檛 just talk about my successes. I tell them about what has hurt me in life, like my experience being bullied in school, moving all the time, and perpetually feeling like the new kid. I do this because I know that over the course of the class, I am going to ask them to make themselves vulnerable in their writing, and I have to start by making myself vulnerable to them. As a new contributor to 天美视频, this is my attempt to do something similar.
Just as my students have to know me before they can really hear me, the people of Hawaii need to know that I can see and understand them before I can offer legitimate input to their community. As an outsider, I worry sometimes about being an educational colonialist. I love Hawaii, and I want to serve her needs, not change her. To that end, my 鈥渙utsiderness鈥 has both advantages and disadvantages.
I am going to use a wide brush for a minute and make some broad generalizations about some of the dynamics I鈥檝e seen at work in communities I鈥檝e served on the North Shore and Leeward side. I in no way think that this applies to everyone in Hawaii. Hawaii is way too diverse for that, but there are always questions as to whether someone 鈥済ets it鈥 here. This is what I get about the local community.
The vast majority of my students have a firmer sense of identity and cultural belonging than I have ever experienced, and I have a deep respect and admiration for that. I am jealous that I didn鈥檛 have those kinds of roots, so it is important to me that they do.
I entirely understand my students鈥 perspective. They love and value their extended families and tight-knit communities. Their brothers and sisters graduated five years ago and still live at home while they work at uncle鈥檚 tow-truck company or auntie鈥檚 bakery, and they are happy. They 鈥済o beach鈥 or hunting boar on weekends and never miss a birthday party, holiday together, or weekend barbecue. As for the prospect of leaving to attend college on the mainland, the idea of leaving their family, friends, and beaches to go study indoors all day isn鈥檛 even on their radar.
The culture and aina are in love with one another, and it is a beautiful thing to see. They are grafted and have evolved to protect one another. That means that some social or political 鈥減roblems鈥 as we think of them on the mainland are actually advantageous and help to protect the people and the land here. When adjusted for cost of living, income is low, as is social mobility, but that prevents outsiders from coming in and taking over.
And those 鈥渋ssues鈥 actually reinforce the cultural ethic of valuing relationships over materialism by favoring extended family households. When multiple generations live in a single home, the individual members tend to earn enough to have a comfortable level of disposable income, especially when all the best entertainment is free.
As a result, the jobs my students see available that pay enough for them to live the way they would like don鈥檛 make education very high-stakes. At the same time, the 鈥済o to college鈥 mantra has been adopted in force by the schools. This leads to a situation where the vast majority of students will say that they are going to go to college after high school, but only 11 percent of students that start classes at LCC will ever graduate with a four-year degree.
The close-knit nature of the communities and close proximity of people also means that social networks tend to determine the way things fall into place a lot more than they do on the mainland. It is nearly impossible to do anything, especially hire someone, without the name of a family member, distant relative, or friend of the family popping up somewhere. Valuing and providing for family and community is the definition of integrity here, and there is never anything immoral about helping your community, ever.
But the world is changing, and so are the threats to the way of life here. I see my kids wearing 鈥淒efend Hawaii鈥 shirts every day, but they can鈥檛 articulate what that means, what the real threats are, or how to go about actually defending it. I see the biggest threat to Hawaii to be an economic one. Capitalism is a double-edged sword, and the profit motive is a never-satisfied beast. The pressure to continually develop and privatize the land is and will be forever unrelenting.
Hawaii must continue to develop economically. But in an increasingly complex world, the factors that go in to decisions about what constitutes good and bad development are also becoming increasingly complex. If our youth are truly going to preserve the land and spirit of Hawaii for the generations after them, they will have to be ready for the chicanery the world will use to try and take it from them, they must be literate to the legal, political, and economic factors that threaten it, and they will have to be discerning enough to make good decisions for themselves and for their community.
The foundational knowledge necessary to do those things is significantly eroded right now, and if we do not improve the literacy and knowledge base of our students, Hawaii鈥檚 future will be in peril. It is my passion to defend Hawaii and help rebuild that foundation.
