flip side of paradise, The

NEA Today, Nov 1996 by Novak, Walt

live in a mellow community called Waialua. It's small, peaceful, and relaxed. But each workday morning for 12 years now I drive an hour to one of the most socially challenging, rough-and-tumble places I know.

People always ask me why I don't transfer to an "easier" community. I usually roll my eyes and shrug. This time I'll respond: My school is where I fit in, where I've evolved as an educator-kind of like Darwin's finches or Galapagos turtles. It's where I belong. without knowing why.

My school is less than half a mile from the deep blue Pacific. A terrific tropical mountain range encompasses our backside. The ocean contains yellowfin tuna and marlin. Within a fivemile radius lay some of the best waves in the entire surfing world. The mountains host pheasant and wild boar.

Needless to say, a lot of students hunt or fish. An educator can score tons of points by being knowledgeable in those areas. especially if he can weave wild tales starring the aforementioned critters. I've told so many fishing stories that some of them were even true.

Sounds like paradise, doesn't it? Then why does it have homelessness, violent crime, teenage pregnancy, broken families, drugs, alcoholism. and some of the perennially lowest SAT scores in America?

The best short answer to that question came to me-in analogous form-when reading an article about an educator who spent decades studying Native American culture in the Southwest. Here it is: The values of a Caucasian-dominant society aren't necessarily Hawaiian values-and a formerly proud heritage can be decimated when subjected to takeover.

So how does an educator succeed in a place where many students enter class troubled-instead of fortifiedby their home life, with no breakfast, and little desire?

I don't know. I wish I had a snap answer, like "Be genuine!" or "Show concern!" or "Be fair!" But on some days, nothing works. For me, teaching highs are extremely high, but the lows are full-on rock bottom. Some days, I swear I feel like I couldn't have done worse if you paid me. Other days, I leave work thinking I must surely be an educating messiah.

I will say this: Teaching at my school is never-I mean never-dull. And I've learned a few tricks.

Hawaiian is a notoriously oral, taletelling culture. I teach eighth grade English, so we do a lot of oral reading in my classes and ham it up like crazy. I rarely teach the "The Classics," but rather, what I consider to be the best in adolescent literature. I make sure the lit heroes are teenagers, preferably 17-ish, as eighth graders idolize that age.

I do dramatic readings regularlyI've got certain passages rehearsed, down cold, with full emoting and dialect. My main objective is to make "that novel stuff" come alive. Only then will my students feel that it's meaningful. Only then will they try.

On the first day of school, I always ask the same questions. Ninety percent of my 8th graders don't know whose face graces the nickel, how many years ago Christ lived, or the name of the current vice president. But, what I find especially troubling is that they can't tell you the city, state, and country in which they live. For "country" they nearly always answer with the name of their village. All their lives they've heard island residents refer to their rural village as "country" and Honolulu as "town." Provincialism is an enormous enemy of mine, something I constantly butt heads with. The pervasive attitude is that this little drop-de-terre in the middle of the Pacific is the entire world. I employ personal experiences, the globe, cultural anecdotes, the newspaper, and adolescent literature heroes to emphasize that Oahu is not. We aren't the world, just part of it. Life is large-but the water is wide.

Someday my students will cross. To encourage them is why I'm here.

Walt Novak's novel about teaching in Hawaii's public schools, The Haole Substitute, is being made into a movie.