God Bless America (Week 5)

This week in my guidance class I elaborated on the "Where I'm from Poem" with my juniors. Two weeks ago I assigned this project to them and read through several examples of the poem. They turned in their 1st drafts this week and next week they will submit their finals.

I hope to publish their poems and submit them for sale at our school fundraiser. This year's theme for our CLA Harvest Fair is "God Bless America". At first mention of this title, I smirked and rolled my eyes a little, not because I think that God shouldn't bless America, or anything like that. However, I questioned why it wasn't something like "God Bless the Big Island", or "God Bless Hawai'i". When I was told that the money earned from the art table (which is where the poems will be displayed) is going to aid families in Texas and Louisiana- and anywhere else that it ends up going for relief funding- to help those who have been devastated by the recent hurricanes and flooding, my heart was softened. Despite being so far away from the disaster I am saddened and full of prayers for all those people. I am glad that our school is doing something to help and that my community as a whole is banding together to be a blessing to others. I think this is the real beauty of community, knowing that we all can be part of a larger body of people who have the power collectively to do more good than just one person could possibly ever accomplish on their own.

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During our last session (Week 5 on Monday), it was helpful for me to chat with Tara about some of my questions regarding place and sense of place for my sense of place paper that is due tomorrow.

One thing that I really wanted to be made clear was how a teacher initiates questioning his/her students about what they "care" about? Where, as teachers, do we begin in this understanding process of getting to know our students? For example, is starting this style of teaching as simple as saying, "Hey, what do you guys care about? What should we learn about today?", or can it be like, "There's a really cool place I want to show you. Tell me what you think about it. Do you have any questions? In what ways can we help to make this place better?". Last year I worked with a group of 7 students on a "design think" project. The whole point of the project was to create a product that was conceptualized from the beginning by empathizing with real needs of people in our communities. Namely, our community did include our school and surrounding town. The product would get engineered and improved throughout a prototyping process. Ultimately, the product would serve as a solution to the initial problem to help meet the needs of those people we identified from the beginning of the process. Sounds good right? Well, turns out this was a tough project! Well worth it, but challenging.

As I reflect on why it seemed so challenging and frustrating to get my students to articulate a clear, critical perspective about their community, it became obvious that they didn't really understand 1) what places and which people constituted our community, and 2) what counted as an issue or real problem. I also think the biggest obstacle was a lack of familiarity with larger spaces beyond our school, their homes, and for some their church groups. To be clear, for this specific project, all these places were open as starting points for defining "need".

Now, this part of my experience confuses me. How is it that young people, who go outside and engage in so many different places, can have so little perspective about what they think their communities need. Additionally, who do they think is responsible for servicing those needs? What are they thinking about when they engage in society beyond our school campus? Do they feel useful in ANY way at all in the world? Do they want to be useful in any way in the world? Most would answer "Yes!"…and then, silence.

In the Lim and Barton paper (2010) they cite the work of Chawla and Salvadori (1999) which addresses this very point. Children cannot be expected to magically develop a critical lens of society or the environment just by being out in society and the environment. Meaning, there has to be something placed in their minds that helps them construct  new perspectives which advances how they see their world. For example, my students go to the beach almost every week. They go with their families, they go with their classes, and this is a common practice. But, many of them know very little about issues related to marine debris and the amount of plastic and trash that is hiding in plain view along our island's coastlines. Or, many of them know that "recycling" is a good thing to do, but they have no idea where trash or recyclables go after they are dumped at the transfer station. Another example being that many students have explored the island and love to go hiking into the valleys and to waterfalls. But, they have no idea about the threats of invasive species and the impacts ROD and other pathogens have on our forests. They know that "renewable energy" is a "thing", but they have no idea how it impacts their lives and the long-term impacts related to climate change. So, how are they expected to identify the "right" solutions when they don't understand the problem? And more importantly, if they don't understand the problem, they most likely will not act to be part of the solution.

So, our work as STEMS2 teachers is definitely cut out for us. If nothing else, I believe we need to start by just taking kids outside and teaching them about the world and showing them a range of issues that should matter to them. Although, the "should" part is definitely where my bias and personal views come in to play. If I think it's important shouldn’t they? And I'm okay with sharing with them the things that I feel are relevant and significant problems, issues, and questions I have that impact our shared places. I am okay with this. The key part though is being adamant and intentional about finding, knowledgeable and reliable community partners to help share this load and offer support and counter-perspective to my teaching.

The picture in this post was taken from a hike I did last weekend with some students to Mauna Ulu. There it is in the background!