Culturally Relevant Education

I've been thinking a million things I want to write about lately, but haven't found the time. Four classes = approx. 500 pages of reading per week = a slow and painful death.

Today in my evaluation class we briefly looked at a curriculum that is being developed for schools in Hawai'i and Kaua'i. It's designed as a culturally relevant science/Language Arts/art curriculum (and it seemed to have social-emotional standards to me as well) for 4th grade students. One of our professors (it's a co-taught course) is going to part of the team that evaluates this curriculum. From what I understand, it is being piloted in a super elite school: it's private, they spend about $39,000 per year per pupil (the Illinois average is about $10,000), and students must have a Hawaiian blood lineage prior to Hawaii becoming a US state. The program was designed for several purposes, one of which being that the native Hawaiian language(s?) is being used less and less; they fear that when the current generation of elders die out, the language (and, therefore, a large component of the culture) will die with them.

The curriculum consists of videos and accompanying graphic novels of a traditional Hawaiian story. There are also other books that (I believe) delve deeper into the science content (we did not get to view these materials). We watched the video of one of the stories: Menehune and the birds. Here's a very brief synopsis:

The Menehune people are small and can build things very fast; they are never seen. They have a close relationship with the forest and the birds. They pluck feathers from the birds to use in clothing and decorations, but they never pluck more than a few at a time, so the birds can still fly happily and produce more feathers. One day, men come from another tribe, kill many of the birds, and take all their feathers. The Menehune warriors (all men) find them, become invisible with the assistances of some leaves, beat them up mercilessly, and only spare their lives because they promise to make amends and restore the balance of the forest.

There are some great social lessons in this piece, as well as some that I winced at (gender norms, extreme violence). I got stuck on a few things as I considered the curriculum...

• I've been thinking about teacher and student cultures in one of my other classes as well, and I debated this a lot when I was teaching at Rudy: is it possible to successfully create and implement a culturally relevant curriculum when you (the teacher) are of a different culture than your students? If it is possible, it must take a LOT of work and learning and years immersing yourself in the culture. If it's not possible, did I do a disservice to my students simply by the fact of being their teacher? And what are the implications for my future jobs -- should I just apply to schools in the area where I grew up? Even there, the schools are diverse and I don't know all the cultures that the students bring. I know that sensitivity and openness to all are givens, but I would really love to be able to create a classroom where students can learn and demonstrate their understandings in their cultural style. (I could write forever about this, but I'm cutting myself off for now.)

• How can we (fairly) decide whose culture gets taught in the classroom? Our state standards have already decided this for us, but it's a singular culture that not all students relate to. In the video, the story that was told is a well-known one of Hawaiian culture -- similar to our folk tales (except it's real) or Bible stories. I was thinking about teaching at Rudy and talking to students about several Latino stories -- in particular, ghosts. It seemed like ghosts, and believing in them and their power in your life, were part of Latino culture. (You could say that a lot of people believe in ghosts, but they seem to have a more definite, stronger presence among the Latino students that I talked to.) However, if a student asked a science teacher to discuss the science behind ghosts, the teacher would probably say that there is none, and ghosts don't exist. Our bodies rot in the ground when we die. (At least, if they were speaking strictly according to the standards, they would say that.) We don't leave room for the truths of other cultures to mingle with Western truths, and we simply label them myths or falsehoods. For students who are connected to their cultures, this must create an awful tension -- which truth do I believe? It's funny, because if this argument were framed around Creationism vs. Evolution, I would probably not be quite so tolerant with older students...but really, what's the difference? They're all different truths, and are all reality to different people. How can we, as teachers, decide that we all need to stick to one truth?