Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Upper Divison English, clip 1 of 12

Abstract

Brief excerpt from interview: I wanted students to have the opportunity to write about a place that is significant to them. For many of us, we may grow up in Hawaiʻi, but we may have moved around a lot or we may not have had the opportunity to learn about the places where we live... Not just its current status but what it was like... how it was recorded in the moʻolelo, the stories or the histories. [The students] began with readings from a book called 'An Atlas of Radical Cartography' and it was to show them that mapping can be used to promote social change. The texts I chose were the ones that I really enjoy reading, so the epic tale of Hiʻiakaikapoliopele was like the cornerstone text. It was the one that really anchored the course because it brings together these beautiful moʻolelo of places and actually she does an entire circuit of Oʻahu... So students were bound to find a place on Oʻahu that they could write about. I asked them to do different writing assignments... I had them write different kinds of papers so they can engage in different kinds of writing, but part of what they're trying to develop through the course is a way of helping others to grow aloha ʻāina for these places. As a writer, your job is to grow that aloha ʻāina for your readers.