AAS 197J ClassWeb Magazine

Community Education: Student Empowerment

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Assignment 6: UCLA Students Share Their Stories with Wilton Place Kids

According to Wilton Place teacher Tony Osumi: "If UCLA students can create opportunities for the booklet to express the kids' voices and interests, it will be no problem getting them to write for it. Motivation comes from the meaningfulness of the work. My guess is that most of the kids have not read or seen stories or heard people talk about their lives in real ways. They may need models and examples from us. UCLA students should be writing stories now and sharing them with students. Students may also not really understand the concept of publishing and sharing their stories with a wide audience. Most teachers don't do anything like this — not even within their own classroom. If kids grasp the importance of wanting to share their own stories and receive support for doing it, motivation goes way up. UCLA students should think of ways to bring this understanding to a kid’s level quickly."

Taking Tony’s comments into account, write two short stories of about one-half page each about yourself based upon the following list or any other topic you think may be relevant to the type of work we are doing in Wilton Place classrooms. Remember, we are writing this for elementary students.

1. How you got your name and what it means.
2. How and why your family came to America or Los Angeles.
3. Your most memorable day — good, bad, exciting, scary, etc.
4. Your favorite family food.
5. A story that connects somehow to the Open Court theme, but takes it a step further and teaches a moral, message, or is more critical and probing.

Dean Saranillio, "My Home Is In Hawai'i"
Dean Saranillio, "I Am Filipino and Japanese"
Eriko Suzuki, "My Country, Japan "
Eriko Suzuki, "The Most Memorable Day"
Christine Tran, "My Name is Christine Tran and Tran Hoai Phung"
Christine Tran, "I Love Food, But What's My Favorite?"
Melissa Hilario, "My Favorite Food is Kare Kare"
Melissa Hilario, "Teamwork"
Cheryl Samson, "Short Biographical Stories"

My Home Is in Hawai‘i

By Dean Saranilli

I am from Hawai‘i. Hawai'‘i is a group of islands about 2,500 miles from here. I really miss home because it is so beautiful there. In Hawai‘i the skies are blue and the ocean is clean. My friends and I like to go diving in the ocean and look at the different kinds of fishes. We see all kinds of different fish, sharks, turtles, stingrays, and once my friends and I seen a dolphin. My friends and I like to eat the fish that we catch. It tastes really good and I think fish is my favorite food.

There are a lot of different people who live in Hawai‘i. There are many different kinds of people in Hawai‘i; some are Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, Korean, White, Black, and Latino. There are a lot of different kinds of people there. Even though Hawai‘i is beautiful, a lot of people in Hawai‘i are poor. And they work a lot. Some people in Hawai‘i have to work three different jobs. But together, people in Hawai‘i are trying to make things better. People in Hawai‘i are trying to get paid more so that they don't have to work three jobs. This makes a lot of the families closer because the parents can spend more time with their families. And together they can do more fun things like go to the beach.