 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, your host here on Pacific Partnerships for Education. This new show here on Think Tech Hawaii and it's all summed up in its title. It's all about the various partnerships that we're doing across the Pacific for education, how PREL is working, PREL has specific resources for education learning, is working with all kinds of other agencies and groups around the Pacific. And with me today, and the Think Techs you do, I have Dr. Jojo Peter. Peter, welcome, Jojo. Thank you very much, Ethan. Glad to have you here. Dr. Peter is a wide-ranging expert. He got his bachelor's in communication at the University of Guam, has two masters in one in Pacific Island Studies and one in history from UH Manoa and a doctorate in education from UH Manoa also. Thank you. He is serving as a commissioner on the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission, worked with the Legal Aid Society. He's a member of the Limited English Proficiency Task Force, Department of Labor and Industrial Relations for the state, community organizer for innumerable groups, host of a Micronesian connection on Olalo television, has had positions at Copgillani College, UH Manoa and College of Micronesia. So, a wide-ranging history. I'll do my background right now. I work for PREL as a researcher, yeah. Yeah. And so, we're gonna sort of go over the general idea about Micronesians in Hawaii and what impacts this is having, particularly in terms of education in the state and all. So, I thought it might start by looking at sort of the scope of the issue. What, do you have a sense about what proportion of Hawaii students across the education spectrum are migrants from Micronesia at this point? Well, it's kind of a, it's a bit more complicated issue than just having like outright numbers in. And that is if there were any reliable number that we can point to to say, you know, there's this many students in the system. I think there's just no data out there that we can use. There is also an issue of, you know, sometimes when, you know, we talk about Kofa Micrones population and students, in this case, students in the school system, you don't differentiate between the group that move from the Kofa nations. RMI, Federalist, States of Micronesia and Republic of Olao, differentiated from the ones who are born and raised of the same ethnic background. And those are US citizens. Right. So it's a smaller number, will be like a fraction of that overall number would be the ones that moved from Micronesia to Hawaii and are enrolled in the school system. Sure. So a long non-answer to your question is that, you know, we don't have any reliable data on that, you know, on that number of Kofa citizen and students in the school system. But there is a, you know, from, I think what then to be the highlight is the issues that is related to serving those students. Right. You know, with a level of education and transition into the school system. Right. And as you point out, it's a very diverse population. In some cases, the parents or even grandparents may have moved here generations ago. The kids have been raised in a very Western environment. In other cases, these are people literally, you know, fresh off of a very different generation. And I think you also would love to look at the multi-generation now that have gone through the school system. I think that, for example, the ones that moved here after in the 80s, the compact of free association, this treaty with the open immigration law in it, was enacted in 1986. So the ones that moved here, I mean, shortly thereafter, as children and participating in the school system, now their children are in the school system. Right. And hopefully having less trouble than the school system, simply from the parents and the parents. Having grown up in the system. So they have pretty much the same level of engagement as the other ethnic groups. Right. The same opportunity of engagement as the other group in the school system. Right. So this sort of gets at the point that Paul Haddock brought up in our last show on this series was particularly coming people from the smaller outer islands have a very different sort of cultural view of education and formal schooling because if you've grown up on an island of say three or 400 people or you've lived there your whole life, your grandparents, their parents, it's like their school is a very different beast. Right. And it's not just the students, it's the way their family and the community engages with schooling and education as a Western concept. Yeah, yeah. Totally different from learning lifelong. I mean, life skills and learning outside of the classroom. Right. On the islands it's much more important to understand your relationships with other people, your duties and obligations to them, their expectations from them, how you get by on what you've got. I kind of think about it like this way is on a small island like I said of 400 people, you learn how to plant taro outside of the classroom, how to cook fish and how to pick breadfruit and stuff. But you, and then in the classroom you learn about science. Right. You know something a bit abstract and sometimes the curriculum doesn't always mesh the two successfully. Right. To make Western learning a part of lifelong learning. Right, so this is actually one of the things I was working on for five years, a project of Water for Life. And we had, we'd get communities together working on improving our access to drinking water, taking a, for instance, a ground spring and lining it with concrete, putting a brick wall around it, security screening roof, running some piping outside of it, so that it was protected and stayed clean. This was the idea was to make the application of science or STEM or science, technology, engineering and math more of a vital part and help people see that, yeah, this is really useful stuff to be able to know about this and hopefully engage more students and more community members in learning. Right. In learning science. And when people talk about like cultural learning let's look at tarot, for example, hollow farming. It's a very cultural centerpiece of our culture and our cultural practice in the islands, here in Hawaii. But very little has to do with what goes on in the classroom. So if you have that disconnect, then chances are there is still this disparity disparity between what goes on in the classroom and what you're learning as culture, quote unquote. So there's always that separation there. Right, so the real trick here is to try to make that kind of diversity into a strength where the students who are coming in bring knowledge that Hawaii students may not have and share that with them and become seen as resources of valuable learning, valuable information rather than simply as kids who are different and who don't fit in and who don't understand what's going on. And I think the more diverse the background of the student population, the richer the educational experience for all the students from the community regardless of the background. And I think it's a very worldly attitude towards learning. Absolutely, absolutely. It makes sense, it just doesn't always practice. Right, right, you clearly in any sensible way of thinking about it, you want a great diversity of perspectives and viewpoints that it's gonna make for rich classroom discussions about, well, what about doing it this way? Well, my culture might approach this issue a different way, we might do it this way. And somebody else from another culture will chime in, we had another idea and you'll get bubbling up the ways of bringing ideas together and thinking about things more critically rather than having everybody just sort of think the same way. Absolutely, absolutely. So given that, why do you think it is so commonly sort of this issue is framed as more of a problem than as an opportunity, right? It's a good question. I think it's along with everything else that is the experience of my clinician population here in Hawaii. I think it has sort of turned into a lot of misopportunities. Misopportunities to do the right thing first and foremost, misopportunity to learn, to embrace contribution of people from the first background. I think what has happened is it sort of got caught up in all of the negative backlash that unfortunately has dominated the public discourse, be it public law, public policy, healthcare and education and just community and social interaction in general. I think what has happened is all of the, for example, the bullying and the racist jokes that sort of got in precedence over any meaningful engagement between teachers and students and students and students from different backgrounds. And I think there's also a lack of involvement, I so to speak, on both sides of the coin, because of maybe cultural and different traditional attitude towards different attitude towards education and the role of community in education. It's not necessarily a deficit model or a deficit background to have. Like back home, when we talk about education, there's a clear delineation between the role of schools and school officials and community and society. I mean, communities, parents and families, you know. What goes on in the school is the prerogative of the teachers and the principals. And you don't wanna disrupt that and I think you'll be responsible to do so. As we're here, there's a lot of this encouragement or involvement now for a population that hasn't always done that. You don't quite always know how to do it. And I think there's a need for some education on both sides of the coin, both sides of the equation, where they said, these are the things that we need from community and these are the things that community can get from, you know. Right, so it's sort of a misunderstanding in a lot of ways of cultural norms where in juke or plow or somewhere, it might be considered very almost rude for parents to question or teach or ask what's going on in the school. Whereas here, that's sort of expected and when parents don't do it, they're regarded as sort of failing in their duty somehow. Parents and parents group are supposed to be watchdogs for what goes on in the school and they call out teachers. Can you imagine something like that back home for community members to be asked to call out teachers? Who are the teachers you're calling out? You're calling out sometimes your own relatives. And that is disrespectful, socially irresponsible. Many times, yeah, yeah. Permits down to the students too and their cultural attitudes they've been brought up with to not question adults, to be respectful, to keep their eyes downcast in the presence of their, or even sometimes missing the presence of older family members, right? But you know, those are the inherent differences between a Western school model of learning and a traditional model of learning where critical skills is sometimes misunderstood or even overused in a cross-culture. Sometimes it's not always used or it's not always done in a responsible manner, yeah. Right. I mean, the skills you need in one situation are entirely different from those you need in another. There's an old saying, I forget who the author of this was, but he said if aborigines in Australia develop the IQ test, presumably all Western civilization would flunk. I mean, it's true. If I were to drop in the middle of the Australian outback I'd be dead in the day, you know. And folks there can survive on essentially nothing because they've grown up to understand. So yeah, there's tremendous differences here. So I'll tell you, what do you think we can really, what can we do, I guess, is sort of the question who needs to take the lead maybe is the better way of putting that in terms of helping turn this, what's so often seen as a challenge and opportunity. Yeah, it's a complicated situation because structurally I think the community, the Micronesian communities here it's gonna be a little more diverse than we think than most people would assume. People would sometimes ask this question like, who should we go to? Who's the leader? Or assuming that there is a one person that can affect all of that changes. And we all hope that, you know, it's like we hope that it's as easy as that, but it's not. You have different groups, like you have church groups, but even the church groups are limited in their own scopes. People go to the churches to hear about church things. Sometimes when you bring in all of that other things, it sort of oversteps the role of the, but church leaders are good community leaders too. We also need to kind of like work within the structure of providing services, social services and use that approach for educational engagement as part of the services. Because the same people will come to outreach, for example, to look for healthcare coverage. Are also people who have issues with, so sometimes when we do outreach, you will hear more than just what you're listening for. Exactly. And sometimes, you know, so if you set up the system in a way, your outreach or your community engagement in a way that it receives, it takes in all of this and start building around those voices that you're hearing from the community. We're gonna dig into this more deeply. I'm told we need to take our little midway break here. Jojo Peters with me here today. I'm your host, Ethan Allen. You're on Pacific Partnerships in Education and we'll be back in one minute. It's from The Foundation for a Better Life. Planning all week for the day of the big game. Home just doesn't feel the same. But on the list is who's gonna drive. It's nice to know you're gonna get home alive. Plan for fun and responsibility to the DD. Captain of our team, it's the DD. For every game day, assign a designated driver. And you're back here with me, Ethan Allen, your host here on Pacific Partnerships in Education here on Think Tech Hawaii. With me today in the studios is Dr. Jojo Peter. And we're talking about all the complex issues around Micronesians who have emigrated to Hawaii here some many years ago, some yesterday. And particularly the impacts on educational systems. And Jojo was bringing up earlier a very interesting point about, we often think it's a matter of sort of teaching sort of a one-way flow, teaching the Micronesian population about how to get along in the culture. But in reality, this system works much better if everyone learns, right? If those people who are trying to provide educational help or legal help or medical help or employment help or whatever to Micronesians, if they actually talk one-on-one with new immigrants, figure out what it is these people really want, what it is they really need, where the precise stumbling blocks are, right? Then they're, if they can get away from their preconceptions of what this population needs and understand it's a bunch of different people who need a bunch of different things, that may be some commonality. And I think sometimes people are sort of surprised by, when you talk about diversity of the background of the group that we're dealing with, they're like, oh, there's that many languages? Oh, yes, oh yeah, oh, okay, there's this many, you know, groups, silent groups and, you know, this many, you know, just the incredible amount of diversity, assuming that you're able to, that you want to learn about that. Because, I mean, in order to be able to help someone as a social services provider or a teacher or an official, it helps to know the background of the people that, and you have to be willing to learn it, you know. I mean, it's not just, you know, just, okay, let's have a once a year teacher training thing, but it's sort of an ongoing thing, you know, to know the student population and to know the background of your students. And for your students, I mean, the family to know who you are. And I think once those barriers are taken down, they will see that it's a lot more, we have a lot more in common that, yeah, we have previously ignored, you know, and that's when learning, and that's when true engagement really takes place. Right, and a good example of this can be seen in, for instance, medical treatment. If people come here and need to go into a medical system, and if the folks within the medical system do not understand the cultural bias, so I won't say biases, but cultural backgrounds of their patients, and there may be, in some Micronesian cultures, very specific gender roles, for instance, and you know, if some young female nurse comes on into an older gentleman, sort of, you know, drop your pants and blah, blah, blah. I mean, this is considered very inappropriate, right? I think it's inappropriate for most of the across one's culture. Right, right, and yet in sort of Western medicine cultures, you do this, you know? Having some sensitivity to that, so, you know, the medical profession should learn whatever possible to try to respect those cultural norms as much as possible, and vice versa. And also just also understanding the situation that the people find themselves in here. Right. You know, where do they live, how much they have to deal with on a regular basis, in order to be, because education is just one of the many things that families face, and it's true for all families. You know, it's an important component of what goes on as a family, for the family, but, and it's an important investment, so people are willing to put the time into it. But also, there's also health, there's economic, there's housing, there's putting food on the table. So sometimes when, you know, kids don't show up for field trip, you know, because they don't have the money, sometimes that is a real issue, you know? Sometimes people find that hard to believe, but it is actually a real issue that sometimes parents may not have that money for the kid to go on field trip. Sometimes the hard decision is made that they take that limited resource and apply it, you know, to a more critical, you know, problem. Right, and again, these same sort of misunderstandings happen all across all the different sectors, right? I mean, in legal sector, again, there's very different sort of views in a place like Chukwere, much of the, even the basic titled land is often very unclear, right, as to who really owns what piece of land. That has been one of the major, major criticism about those islands, that is that they don't conform. Conform to, you know, do those things that would spur, you know, quote unquote development. Right, I was talking the other day to a gentleman who worked for the Bank of Hawaii and did for a number of years, went out to Micronesia and was responsible for doing mortgages. And he would try to do mortgage things out in Chukwere, for instance, and, you know, try to report back about what he was trying to do. And I mean, both people he dealt with in Chukwere didn't understand why he was doing it, and the people, his bosses couldn't understand why he couldn't get this simple paperwork done. Even a simple thing as a lease, you know, trying to get somebody to sign off on that lease when the land is family owned, zone by every member of that lineage, you know, it gets very tricky. And I know because we try to, you know, one of our responsibilities when running the college is to do facility improvement. And that means the land, and you know, you try to get a piece of paper, you know, signed by whom you think is a bona fide representative, you know, of the property, then you also get into this other, you know, people that, you know, have equal claim. Right, yeah. And rightfully so. Right. And again, there may be some odd parallels here in Hawaii in bits and pieces. Yeah, in a way, and that's what happened in Hawaii. Once you turn the land into private ownership. Right. It's easy to dispose of it as a commodity. Right. That's where, you know, that's still very difficult back home because, you know, it's still traditionally owned by families. Right. So I gather in Chuuk there's something like $17 million sitting around waiting to build new schools, but nobody can get clear title to land to build a school line. That has been the case for some time. Yeah. It seems, there should be a solution to that somehow, but it's a very, it defies easy solutions. It depends on, you know, who gets, you know, what system gets presidents over. Right. You know, that access to the land property. Right. So in the last few minutes, let's talk a little bit about what kinds of resources are available and where they can be found here for people either looking to better understand this issue or people coming in to get help. Do you have suggestions to anyone who might be, any viewers who might be watching? Well, first, one of those things I've always wanted to encourage before we get into that, even to that discussion is we need to encourage more students from Micronesia to get into education, you know, to get into training to be teachers and to be officials and administrators in schools, because it's easier for children to learn from people from a place when you look across the table and there's somebody familiar to you that is, oh yeah, okay, it's a place that you're comfortable, that it demands your respect and it welcomes you. So yeah, that's one, to encourage more Micronesians to be, you know, the other thing is, to get more schools, the school system to open up more to, you know, cultural training, engagement with families. You know, REL is an organization that, you know, it's in the position to provide those services, as well as we are Oceania is one of our service centers. That was, just started about two, two, three years ago. There are a lot of resource people in the community. I think it's a matter of, you know, just organizing those resources in a way, another thing is to pay people to do that kind of work, you know, because there's an issue that can't be taken care of by having cultural, you know, advocates, people who can work as liaisons between you and the community in the absence of everything like good cadre of Micronesian teachers. You know, hopefully that's gonna be addressed in the future, but for now, you know, those are the kind of scaffolding that we may need to. Well, this is great. We could obviously go on for some time about this, but we are unfortunate out of time. So we're gonna wrap up another episode of Pacific Partnerships in Education. Dr. Joe Schoepeter, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. And I hope you'll join us again in two weeks for another episode. I'm your host Ethan Allen, signing off until then.