Princess Pauahi's Kamehameha Schools Preserve Native Hawaiian Culture and History

While conducting research for my book Chalkboard Champions, I learned a great deal about numerous types of schools that I had never heard about in my thirty-odd years as an educator. Industrial schools, emancipation schools, farm schools, normal schools, specialist schools. Where were all these terms when I went through student teaching? One type of school I learned about that I found particularly intriguing is the Kamehameha School located in the beautiful state of Hawaii.

Kamehameha Schools were first established in 1887 at the bequest of Bernice Bishop, also known as Princess Pauahi, a member of the Hawaiian royal family when the state was still a territory. Princess Pauahi and her beloved husband, an American named Charles Reed Bishop, had no children of their own, and so when she passed away in 1882 at the age of 52, she directed that her vast estate should be used to benefit and educate underprivileged Native Hawaiian children. Two schools were built: one for boys and one for girls. Eventually the two schools were merged to form a coed school, now located on a six-hundred-acre campus on the main island of Oahu overlooking Honolulu Harbor. 

 

Kamehameha Schools serve the important function of preserving Native Hawaiian culture, history, and language. One of the ways this is done is through the annual choral competition known as the Kamehameha Song Contest, where traditional Hawaiian songs and dances as well as new compositions in the genre are performed by the students. This is a wonderful tradition that goes back 45 years.

 

When I think of Chalkboard Champions, my first thought is of teachers, of course, but individuals such as Princess Pauahi who support schools financially and with their volunteer hours are also heroes to our students!

Read more about Kamehameha Schools in my book Chalkboard Champions, available on amazon.

The "Soup School": Food for Thought

While in the process of conducting research for my book Chalkboard Champions, I learned about many types of schools that I had never heard about in the thirty-odd years I have been a professional educator. Industrial schools, emancipation schools, freedom schools, farm schools, normal schools. Where were all these terms when I went through student teaching? I was particularly intrigued by the concept of the "soup school." What was that all about, I wondered?

 

I learned that a "soup school" was an institution established during periods of pronounced immigration to our country. Their purpose was to provide assistance to immigrant children as they struggled to assimilate within a new, dominant culture. Often times these schools were founded by charitable organizations or missionary societies. It makes sense that these schools were located primarily near areas of immigrant entry, New York City, for example. The main curriculum in these facilities was instruction in the English language, basic literacy skills, and American culture. Apparently, the school got its name from the fact that at noontime a bowl of soup was served to the students, a free meal which would have been most welcome to the poorest of immigrants. In contemplating this practice, I'm wondering if our nation's free lunch program would be considered a modern version of the "soup school"?

 

You can read more about soup schools in Chalkboard Champions, available on amazon.

Indian Boarding Schools: A Cultural Disaster

While I was conducting research for my book Chalkboard Champions, I was surprised to learn a great deal about numerous types of schools, more than I ever learned in the thirty-odd years I had been teaching. Industrial schools, soup schools, farm schools, normal schools, specialist schools. Where were all these terms when I went through student teaching? I was particularly interested in reading about Indian boarding schools, and the controversies these generated.

Indian boarding schools were created specifically for the purpose of educating Native Americans. Indian children were sent to these schools, sometimes involuntarily, because it was believed the only way Native Americans could ever succeed in a predominantly white society would be if they abandoned their tribal ways and adopted the lifestyle practiced by the dominant culture, and that this assimilation could best be accomplished when the Indians were very young. Most Indian boarding schools were first founded by church missionaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Later, some were established and run by the U.S. government. The intentions were pure, but in retrospect the results were disastrous. Some historians go so far as to assert these schools were institutions of cultural genocide.

The children, some as young as four years old, were taken away from their families, sent many miles away from home, and forced to give up their languages, customs and religious beliefs, art and music, native clothing, and even their names. These youngsters often found it traumatic when they were forced to cut their long hair, a symbolic act of shame and sorrow to Native Americans. The highly regimented routine and military atmosphere were harsh on the youngest ones. Exposure to diseases to which they had no natural immunities, coupled with homesickness and, in some locations, unsanitary conditions, led to a disturbingly high death rate. In despair, some of the youngsters ran away from their schools, freezing or starving to death trying to make their way back to their home reservations. Such a terribly sad thought for educators who care so much about kids and really believe in the liberating power of schools.

 

You can read a quick overview of these schools in the book Indian Boarding School: Teaching the White Man's Way, available on amazon.com. You can also read about them in Chalkboard Champions.

Pat Nixon: The Pretty Teacher of Whittier High School

I was really surprised to learn that former First Lady Pat Ryan Nixon had been employed for several years in the 1930's as a business teacher at Whittier Union High School in Whittier, California. In fact, she was working as a teacher when she met her future husband, a young and ambitious city attorney named Richard Nixon. Pretty and popular, the former Miss Ryan instructed courses in typing, bookkeeping, business principles, and stenography. Her students remembered her fondly, writes Julie Nixon Eisenhower in a very detailed and very personal biography about her mother published in 1986. You can read all about Pat Nixon's teaching career in the book Pat Nixon: the Untold Story, available on amazon.com.

LBJ, the Schoolteacher

I was very surprised to learn that President Lyndon Johnson had once been a schoolteacher in Cotulla, Texas, where he taught a class junior high school class comprised primarily of Mexican American students, and then as a high school speech and debate teacher in Houston. By all accounts he was an excellent teacher, and, had he stayed in the profession, probably would have enjoyed a very successful career there. I enjoyed learning all about his challenges and successes as an educator. When I read this book, I learned a lot of scandalous things about this president, too. Stuff that would be juicy enough for any daytime drama or prime-time reality show. You can read the detail about LBJ's career as a teacher---and the scuttlebutt, if you're interested---in The Path to Power, Book One of Robert A. Caro's trilogy about this intriguing historical figure.

The Rebound Effect: Positivity Generates Positivity

Every Chalkboard Champion knows that positivity in the classroom generates positivity in return. Here's a tangible example of that which I learned one year, quite by accident.

You know how at the beginning of every year we are asked to complete a form that lists our goals for the year? Well, one year I decided that my goal was to make a sincere effort to be better at praising my students. I wanted to create a more positive relationship with my kids and a more congenial classroom environment. In addition, my principal was impressing upon the staff the need to foster better communication with parents. I decided I would combine the two goals, and so, on my form, I wrote that each month I would write six letters to parents praising their child. As a junior high school teacher with six classes of 42 students each, I reasoned that it shouldn't be difficult to find one kid from each class each month that I could say something good about.

And so for the entire year, at the end of every month, I selected my six students and wrote each one a praise letter on decorative stationery. I read each letter aloud to the student before I put it in the envelope and sealed it, and then I gave it to the kid to take home to their parents. I shared the notes with the students to lower their anxiety level---a letter from the teacher is rarely good news---and to ensure that the note would really get delivered. But I could just as easily have put some postage on the letters and sent them through the U.S. mail.

The response I received from the parents was overwhelming. Many of the parents wrote notes back to me, expressing messages about how much they appreciated receiving praise about their child, how much their child enjoyed my class, or how pleased they were that I was their child's teacher. Imagine my surprise when I realised that I was receiving praise letters like the ones that I was sending! I saved these notes, partly because they were so uplifting, and partly as proof that I had met the goals I had set for myself for the year. In May, I presented them to my principal at my annual evaluation conference. My principal suggested I photocopy the notes and take them to the District Office to be placed in my personnel file there, so I did.

And here is how those letters further rebounded positivity back to me. A couple of years later I applied for a transfer to a new school that was opening up in my district. I was thrilled when I was selected for the position. Imagine my surprise when, later, my new principal told me that he had read those letters in my personnel file, and it was partly because of them that he decided to hire me!

Freedom's Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories

For any teacher who is teaching a course in U.S. History, or for anyone who is intrigued by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's and 1960's, this slender volume is a must-read. The book contains an inspirational collection of true stories by thirty African Americans who were children or teenaged activists during that period of time. These young people tell about what it was like for them to fight segregation in the South, to sit in an all-white restaurant and ask to be served, to refuse to give up a seat at the front of the bus, to be among the first to integrate the public schools, and to face the frightening potential for violence, arrest, and even death to advance the cause of civil liberty. Anecdotes about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sit-ins, the integration of Jim Crow schools, Freedom Rides, the Children's Crusade, and Freedom Summer are among the topics included. You can find Freedom's Children on amazon.com.