Sense of Place

We have been discussing sense of place and trying to define it during our STEMS^2 experience thus far, but I actually began thinking about place and sense of place last December when I began my journey with the Ethnomathematics/STEM Institute "E7" ethnos.  I arrived at the Portables, knew exactly where to park, although I was dropped off that day because my fractured foot meant that my mom was driving me around, and ambled slowly up the steps to be greeted by hugs and smiles from the hui advisors and my soon-to-be E7 buddies.  Very quickly, we would later comment, we felt as if we had known each other forever.  Over the course of the next few months, we shared about where we were from through several fun activities the first of which was bringing three artifacts to show and explain about ourselves.  I brought my senior yearbook, a daruma with one eye still unpainted, and something else which now slips my mind.  We shared information with each other on the second day we had met that many of us had not uttered to any other person before.  These small items helped us to understand where each other was coming from, our senses of individual place, our perceptual dimensions of place.

In STEMS^2 we did the same when we shared who we were bringing with us to various places, our makana, and our STEMS^2 notebook organization.  Each of these things helps us to understand pieces of what make up each other which is essential for our interactions within the group.  Sensitivity to and empathy for each others' sense of place rather than complete understanding of or agreement with is essential for relationships in the group.  This extends to our classrooms, meaning that we need to ask our students to share their sense of place and to respect and acknowledge each others' places.

Through service learning, a trek up and down to Kalaupapa, and late-night stargazing, E7 formed shared memories of experiences, a collective sense of belonging, and a group mentality that is a sociological dimension of place.

In my classroom, the sociological dimension of place is defined by jobs students take on (attendance monitors, window monitors, energy monitors, paper passer-outers, erasers, praisers, and SNB monitors) to help our class run smoothly, to the point where when there is a substitute teacher, the students can almost do everything themselves.  The eraser job is new this year, suggested by students to help speed up transition time during class.  Input from students is solicited on nearly a daily basis and each class period may have a different sequence of instruction if it fits their collective learning style better or students may elect to continue to focus on a particular topic in more detail and then do the unfinished topics for homework.

I am lucky that my school is almost by definition one that welcomes experimentation in the classroom, not only in terms of students conducting experiments in their science classes to help them form knowledge (all science classes are inquiry-based), but in our teaching pedagogies.  Ideologically, a laboratory school is a working "laboratory" where experimentation and innovation is supported.  Teachers are given the opportunity to submit proposals for "research projects" which are reviewed by the administration and the entire faculty and approved or disapproved for the following school year.  Regular updates on the research and its outcomes are presented at faculty meetings which often inspire other faculty members or departments to propose research projects of their own.  This ideological dimension of place can also sometimes overlap with political and ecological dimensions of place.  ULS's physical space is actually not its own.  We pay a fee to use University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) classrooms, MPB, outdoor spaces, as well as historic buildings (Castle Memorial Hall) so we are not at liberty to do whatever we please at any given time.  Recent installations of water dispensing stations and ceiling fans in the cafeteria/MPB had to approved by UHM first and then paid for by us.  Future plans for renovation of UHS 3 will likely take many years to come to fruition, so we celebrate small achievements and gains.

Another example of the ideological, political, and ecological dimensions of ULS' place is our garden project.  Our $750 grant from Chevron is an alternative source of funding that will help ULS steer funds toward other student-directed projects and programs but is limited by the permissions we have from UHM in terms of what trees and plants we can remove or even trim in the garden courtyard.  In addition, stakeholders such as alumni have ideas about what their vision for the garden is based on what it was used for during their time at ULS (student assemblies) which are in opposition to my memories of Aunty and Uncle's lush garden of native plants.  Our intentions to improve the space and make it a learning space for not just Hawaiian studies, Hula, and Science but for the whole school have met challenges that we must first work to understand (those senses of place) and then work with rather than against to make our collective vision come true.  Collaboration will be necessary but needs a foundation of understanding of place from many different dimensions and perspectives so our first step will be to collect information through a questionnaire on what different stakeholders envision, and then to sit down and discuss our hopes to create a plan together.

Portrait of ULS

The University Laboratory School (ULS) is often confusing to people, as evidenced by the questions I am asked and comments I hear, "It's private, isn't it?  You have to be smart to go there.  How much is tuition?," and I welcome the opportunity to share about the place that I have called "home" for over 30 years, since I first stepped onto the campus at University Avenue and Dole Street on my first day of Kindergarten in August 1983.

Here is the portrait of ULS as presented on our school website, universitylaboratoryschool.org.  This photo shows the main building in which classes for grades 6-12 are held, although we have classroom space in historic Castle Memorial Hall and in the portable classrooms also used by the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa College of Education.  Our school's history has been intertwined with that of UH for many years, as we were once part of the Curriculum Research and Development Group with instructors who were employed by UH who wrote and tested curriculum while teaching students in the classroom.  Today we are a public Charter School and our teachers are highly qualified, licensed by HSTB, and pay dues to HSTA like all DOE teachers.  Now that those technical details are cleared up, let me share my school, ULS.



Below is our entire student body (grades K-12) and faculty after the first assembly of the year in 2014.  With such a small school community, it is not uncommon for students to have friends in grades six years above or below their own.  Interaction between high schoolers and elementary and all grades in between is encouraged through "Share a snack" days where students spend a time getting to know their "buddies" from grade levels as many as 12 apart from their own (Kindergarteners and Seniors) over their favorite snacks from home.

It may be a bit difficult to see, but ULS has a very diverse student population, which is "selected by lottery to create a student body evenly distributed by gender that reflects the ethnic distribution of Hawai‘i, and includes a broad range of student academic achievement and family socioeconomic levels."  The approximately 450 students from grades K-12 include (but are not limited to) the following ethnicities:

Much of an individual's culture is rooted in their ethnicity as well as where they are raised and by whom.  Last year one of the major projects my 7th graders did in Science was a "Family Food Tree" to investigate how the foods they eat at home might be connected somehow to their ethnic backgrounds and culture.  When we began our discussions of foods we eat, many students brought up their favorite foods, chips, drinks, and other snacks, which were common and recognized by most of their classmates.  During our studies of biomolecules (carbohydrates, fats/lipids, protein, etc.) to determine where most of the kilocalories (Calories) we eat and therefore our energy source comes from, students began to bring up more culturally-specific foods like pancit, gyoza, jackfruit, and goulash which provided opportunities for sharing and learning about each other.  Students for the most part at ULS are intrigued by the many cultures of their classmates and want to learn more and their classmates are usually willing and happy to share.

As a school, due to our small student population, entering Kindergarten classes of 10 students which increases to a high school graduating class size of 56 in 6th grade, most students have friends in multiple grades from being in mixed grade level classes in elementary, to music, art, extracurricular teams in middle school, sports, and electives in high school.  This feeling of "ohana" is extended to the faculty and administration as we all want to provide the best learning opportunities for our students.  Many teachers set up "early bird," "lunch crunch," or after school times for students to get extra help or to participate in activities such as Middle School Speech team, Pacific and Asian Affairs Council, Science Olympiad, Math Counts, Photography and Film, Select Choir, Robotics, and Kimono Culture.  Our students already take eight classes every day but many participate in sports after school on ULS teams after school finishes at 3:15 p.m.  They spend a lot of time with their peers and this adds to the feeling of family.

In my classroom, I try to extend the feeling of belonging in a group (in this case their grade level) to create an environment where students take ownership of their learning and work cooperatively and collaboratively during labs and other activities.  Students have classroom jobs such as Paper-passer outers, Window monitors, Attendance monitors, Energy monitors, Praisers, and SNB monitors and work in groups for nearly all labs which are inquiry-based, requiring communication, creativity, and problem-solving skills.  I am currently working with the other 7th and 9th grade teachers to collaborate on lessons that tie-in content between our classes, building upon the Omnivore's Dilemma project from the last four years with English to include more sense of place and culture with identity.  In 9th grade Modern Hawaiian History this year, we will tie-in Hokule'a's current Worldwide Voyage with the Hawaiian renaissance movement.

Edit:
While ULS is located in lower Manoa Valley, geographically, ULS students come from as close as just a five to ten minute walk down the road to as far away as Makaha, Kahuku, Waimanalo, and Kalama Valley.  This is another part of the student body population that is determined during admissions, we seek to serve and represent students from every neighborhood on Oahu.  In some ways this may adversely affect our students' connection to the community of the physical location of our campus, I feel that it deepens our understanding of our island community overall because our students (much like other private and Charter school students) come from many different neighborhoods.  Going to friends' houses (especially finding them when all I had was a Street Map of O'ahu, no GPS in those days) was always an interesting experience and I am sure that my students are exposed to similar experiences today, seeing other neighborhoods and their friends' connections to place, such as crabbing at night on Kailua beach, Morman church on Sundays, swimming in Nu'uanu Stream, getting in over your head (literally) at unfamiliar shore breaks, and boogie boarding at Walls.

As we look towards our STEMS^2 units, I feel that this lack of connection to our school's place can and should be addressed by making sure that our students know about the community that their school's place is in and identifying issues that affect our community that we can propose solutions to.  The Be Ready Manoa Fair that we participated in last year is a great example of how ULS can be more involved in its community.  We presented an activity that was supposed to help the public be more aware of what they should do in order to be prepared for natural disasters such as Hurricanes, Tsunami, and Storms.  Many students attended, but not as many as I think would have had this been in their local community, so it is difficult to have a sense of ownership and belonging in a place that you do not spend much time outdoors in, where you do not know your "neighbors."

As for cultural layers, after our discussion of ahupua'a when we were on the Big Island and how to find out which ahupua'a our schools are in, I started looking for information on Manoa and remembered receiving a booklet about the ahupua'a of Manoa a couple years ago that I have not really looked at.  I did want to incorporate information on ahupua'a with my 7th graders this year so I will try to do so with an emphasis on how changes from the traditional system to our current system have affected our connection to the land.  Looking back at historical photos of the area our school is in will hopefully help the 7th graders to think more about their personal connections to 'aina as well as to Manoa and their own places.

STEMS^2

8/31/2015

Today was a great reminder of how STEMS^2 will enhance my teaching and classes this school year. The first email in my inbox was a congratulations from Chevron Grants for Education informing me that my joint grant proposal with our 7th grade Mathematics teacher who also runs ULS Moonshot Academy, our 10th/11th English teacher who also teaches the Hula, and our Hawaiian Language teacher who also teaches Hawaiian Studies, “is one of 27 grants that has been fully or partially-funded”. Our project is a rejuvenation of our school courtyard garden, which was up for grabs at the beginning of the school year the Project Pono elective was discontinued. For all of the years I have been teaching at University Laboratory School (ULS), Project Pono students have cared for the garden and carried out projects related to sustainability and being “pono” which included beach clean-ups, service-learning, and community-outreach projects.

I have long wanted more than the small boxed in planter area that I have used for the past four years, and this year with STEMS^2 in mind, I am more motivated than ever to plant more than just black-eyed peas and corn with my students. We will also study our ahupua‘a of Manoa for the first time in order to increase our studies of biodiversity while sharing data and cultural information with students in Papua New Guinea and with a new partner school in Washington state.

Our garden plans: Hawaiian studies, Hula, and 7th grade science students will collaborate on mapping existing plants in the garden, decide what to keep and what to remove (into pots if possible to offer for home gardens), and what to put aside for compost. The elective students, 30 or so 10th through 12th graders will do the heavy lifting and digging while the 7th graders help with their (soon to be) knowledge of gardening later this semester. Moonshot Academy will continue and expand their aquaponics system, which would be a great way to test non-soil growth of native plants. By the end of the school year we hope to have plants to use for making lei for hula and graduation and other plants that can be cooked outdoors in the garden or used for other traditional Hawaiian cultural purposes. On our list are: palapaki, laua‘e, plumeria, kupukupu, mamaki, taro, and possibly maile. Any suggestions for others that would do well in the lower Manoa area?

In my other classes, this year’s 9th graders have decided to adopt a Hawaiian Monk Seal as our class mascot for the year. You can adopt your own class monk seal from the Hawaiian Monk Seal Foundation. It’s more of a foster care thing because it isn’t permanent and you are not the only adopters, but you do get a plush monk seal and a certificate! We are also following the Worldwide Voyage to track Hokule‘a’s progress through the Indian Ocean Basin and have our first field study set up to visit the NOAA Daniel K. Inouye Regional Center this month to Skype live with scientists onboard the Okeanos Explorer which is mapping the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.