Multiple Senses of Place and Teaching

Prior to reading any articles or listening to others about what Sense of Place was, I had my own ideas of it. My idea of having a Sense of Place is to have a natural sense for something where one is able to create and predict the actions of the place based off of his/her own experiences and even gut feelings. It would involve us using our five senses, our na'au, and how often we interact with the place that would make us more sensible to it. However, from our readings and other's experiences with this definition, I feel that it is still my own idea, in addition to so much more because everybody's own sense or senses of place is different.

Gruenwald puts his definition of Sense of Place into five categories, Perceptual, Sociological, Idealogical, Political, and Ecological. I feel that these categories do add up to a sense of place because each place is defined individually by each person's perceptions from their experiences, their awareness of society's agreed upon beliefs and ideas of the place, the politics and capital involved with the place, and a person's interactions within the environment of the place. The sentence that you just read is pretty much my definition of Gruenwald's Sense of Place categories. I meshed it all into once sentence because I feel that it is difficult, I would like to say impossible, to only have one idea about a Place. All these things that he talks about shouldn't be separated, but it's all the parts that contribute to a person having a sense of place. So, what matters, to me, is to have an open-mind to everybody's individual sense of place for everything that they respect and are passionately involved with and a way to do that I could see myself doing that is to not individualize, separate, or assume a person's sense of place.

Something was brought up in an online session that I had with the STEMS2 cohort that I can't get out of my head. It was a comment that the military students don't have a sense of place. I was a little bothered by this comment because by making this assumption, we are not being open-minded to the military students' sense of place. From our readings, we should have learned by now that everybody has a sense of place. I feel that our goal as educators is to do our best to educate ALL of our students and one of the best ways to do that is to get all of them involved. Involved could be involved with the school, the community, the society, anything really, but most importantly, involved with their own learning within the classroom.

Yes, students that have recently moved to Hawaii don't have a sense of the culture in Hawaii, but they could have their own sense of place here in Hawaii. Many of my students in Waipahu immigrated here from the Philippines. Heck, half of my family immigrated from the Philippines. My dad moved here when he was four and got adopted by his aunty, while his birth parents and siblings stayed in the Philippines. It wasn't until I was 8 years old and 25 years later for my dad that they moved to Hawaii and have stayed ever since. They did not know the culture, they did not know the area, but they knew their perceptions and ideas of Hawaii as well as the politics of America. For a while, it was actually difficult for me to have a sense of their place as well as they did for mines. They would talk in Ilocano to each other but whenever they'd talk to my family it'd be English. This made me feel left out and it was difficult for me to want to even BE Ilocano, I admit, was somewhat ashamed because they'd always talk Ilocano wherever we went. Looking back now, whenever we went to the beach, they would always feel left out because they never knew how to swim. From realizing our differences in our sense of place, we taught each other the things that we were missing. My dad taught them how to swim and they taught me a little bit of Ilocano as well as how to cook some of the most delicious food. From this experience, I know that I have grown to better have a sense for myself.

I am rambling about my experience because I would like to relate my experience to how it should be within our classroom. If we learn about the different senses of place of our students, then we can build connections and relationships with them that'll enable them to learn in a more positive environment. My students don't even know what the Hawaiian word, " 'ae " means, but they do know how to change a diaper or speak in many other languages that we are even unaware of. Sorry, wanted to say change a diaper because that is the type of environment that many of them do have to live in. Anyways, I feel that if we include our students' senses of place within the classroom then we will have culturally responsive instruction and this will teach the students respect (through modeling) as well as even change their negative perspectives of school and our classrooms. Many of the students coming into my class think that Science is hard and that they don't like it, but when I relate it to things that they do know or are passionate about, then they too become open-minded to learning what I have to offer.