Delimitation And Limitations
One limitation of my research is finding the door into Hawaiian Hula culture. Although Hawaiian people are more than happy to share their cultural knowledge of the dance, it was my experience from living on Kauai that Kumu’s could be rather guarded when it comes to a “howlie” (mainland person) researching their culture. It will be necessary to tread lightly within the culture of the Halau, (class/location where dance takes place). My intention is to make it known that I want to tell “their” story from their indigenous perspective. It is important to put forth the story of Hula, as Hawaiian people want it to be told.
The interpretation will be from the narrative standpoint filtered through a lens of profound respect for the culture. I realized while living in Jamaica and moving within the Rastafarian culture there was a term that was used for people who came to Jamaica and take from the Rasta culture without fully understanding the true meaning and that term is, “Culture Vulture”. It is vital that my research represents the “Hawaiian” perspective related to learning the dance of Hula. The notion of taking and not giving back is a concept that I will be constantly aware of during my research process.
When one enters the narrative study the researcher will cross a threshold and enter a room that is located in the heart and soul of the Hawaiian people. In pre-contact Hawaiian culture the Halau was a temple for the goddess Pele. When a Hula class begins the tradition puts forth that the dancers must ask permission to enter. I see this as a metaphor for the researcher asking permission to record the story of the participant. The narrative researcher will enter a place in Hawaiian culture that is intimate ...
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..., where the emphasis is on teachers teaching and not on students learning (Freire, 1970). Throughout my experience as a teacher I realized that in order for students to engage in the learning process they must have the courage to make mistakes, they must feel secure in the relationship with their teacher, in order for students to feel secure there must be a connection (Dewey, 1938-1997). The teacher wields a great deal of power over her students, due to the fact that you control their destiny for up to six hours each day, five days a week. When students have a relationship or connection with the educator, they are not afraid to make mistakes and explore learning in a fashion that promotes the creative process along with assimilating knowledge. The implications of my research will validate the importance of relationships between students and educators.
The story Navajo Lessons conveys the theme that “It is important to learn and appreciate your heritage.” This story is about a girl, Celine, and her brother that visit her grandmother on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. Celine arrives at a place in the middle of nowhere at her grandmother’s house and is not excited because she had better plans for the summer. Her family is encouraging her to deal with it and make something good out of it. Over time, Celine learns that this trip was worth it because she realized that it is important to learn and appreciate your heritage. Celine learned this in many ways, one of them being that she wanted to learn and listen to the stories that her grandmother was telling.
The Hawaiian culture is known throughout the western world for their extravagant luaus, beautiful islands, and a language that comes nowhere near being pronounceable to anyone but a Hawaiian. Whenever someone wants to “get away” their first thought is to sit on the beach in Hawai’i with a Mai tai in their hand and watch the sun go down. Haunani-Kay Trask is a native Hawaiian educated on the mainland because it was believed to provide a better education. She questioned the stories of her heritage she heard as a child when she began learning of her ancestors in books at school. Confused by which story was correct, she returned to Hawai’i and discovered that the books of the mainland schools had been all wrong and her heritage was correctly told through the language and teachings of her own people. With her use of pathos and connotative language, Trask does a fine job of defending her argument that the western world destroyed her vibrant Hawaiian culture.
The film illuminates the life of the Wampanoag language and cultural meanings. How there had been threats posed to both since the times of European colonization, when the Wampanoag people had put up little resistance. The film is not a recap of the Wampanoag
The cultural studies approach is only one way of analyzing an open text such as the story "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong", but it is one of the best ways to determine the social actions of a society and the reasons for their cultural beliefs. Having knowledge of tools such as gender construction, levels of power, and the theme of isolation, the reader becomes personally involved with the characters and the ways in which they are coerced to live their lives.
Were Dash’s audience to return to the South Sea islands eighty years after “Daughters of the Dust” they might find the Gullah people and their lives similar to those of the Willow Springs of Naylor’s novel. Although nearly a century spans between them, these two people nevertheless share many traits. Many of the residents of Willow Springs answer to a nickname given them as a child; similarly, Viola Peazant reminisces about the nicknames given to children in Ibo Landing. Members of both communities, generations from Africa and steeped in “modernity,” still come to the traditional herbalist for help in matters of the body and spirit: Eula uses Nana’s medicine to contact the soul of her deceased mother; Bernice and Ambush come to Mama Day to heal Bernice when she becomes ill, and later for help in conceiving a child. Both Nana Peazant and Mama Day draw their knowledge from a life lived on their respective islands and their strength from their ancestors, whom they visit and tend at the village graveyards. And like Nana Peazant, Mama Day struggles to maintain a tie with her family members who have left the island and immersed themselves in the mainstream culture.
Art of the Hulaf What is one thing that stands out in most peoples’ minds when they think of Hawaii? Most people would probably say the hula dance. The hula dance descended from, or can be traced to, Polynesia and India. The Hula was a form of poetry for the Hawaiians in all of its sacred and ceremonial forms. In hula dancing, the hands are very important: they tell a story.
In explaining the past, historians must pay attention to culture because understanding the culture is what leads to the formation of new classes, economic and social changes. Referring to back to an earlier stage in Hawaiian history helped them to preserve their values (Sahlins 65). For example, Sahlins ...
In this article, Ghandnoosh articulated different interpretations of hip hop dance culture by people of non-African American heritage. He utilized interviews with non-African American female students and instructors of hip hop dance in addition to participant observation in dance classes which revealed a diversity of interpretations.
Literary Deconstructivism (deconstruction theory) identifies the “undecidability” in a text's meaning (306). Jacques Derrida introduced this form of literary criticism to prove that a text's implied meaning may not be the only point of a text. While Balkin further explains that "deconstruction does not show that all texts are meaningless, but rather that they are overflowing with multiple and often conflicting meanings" (1). Therefore, the recognition of a text's interpretations should be closely examined. In the context of Leslie Marmom Silko’s Ceremony, most critics would argue that the author's main concern is the make readers aware of the Laguna Pueblo Indians' inferiority to white settlers. This conflict caused white settlers, the bourgeoisie, in reference to Marxism, to shape the social, economic, and political constraints in their society because they are in power. After analyzing the context of the text more carefully, it is also evident that the Laguna Pueblo Indians isolate and shape the thought process, identity and acceptance of those partially removed from their culture, particularly those of multi- and other racial ancestry, along with the people in relation with them. It shows that separation of classes take place due to unconscious cultural social order (cultural biases) and higher class versus lower class issues. It is primarily present in the Laguna Pueblo Indians' superiority and interactions with Laura - Tayo's mother, Tayo, and Night Swan.
In the Hawaiian culture, “Ohana” is a significant phrase referring to the bondage of family. There are many heritages across the world that have their own way of communicating that affection and showing their love to their own heritage. Hispanic heritage, for example, have the delicious food while other cultures have different focuses. Through heritage, communities find their niches in society to form an American Heritage. Though heritage exists through communities sharing a common culture, heritage definitely coincides with family and reigning stability within their niche. In the poem “Heritage” by Linda Hogan and the image “Mother Daughter Posing as Ourselves” by Elaine O’Neil, showing affection is one of the most prominent ways to communicate
Kristiana Kahakauwila's, a local Hawaiian brought up in California, perspective view of Hawaii is not the one we visually outwardly recognize and perceive in a tourist brochure, but paints a vivid picture of a modern, cutting edge Hawai`i. The short story "This Is Paradise", the ironically titled debut story accumulation, by Kahakauwila, tell the story of a group narrative that enacts a bit like a Greek ensemble of voices: the local working class women of Waikiki, who proximately observe and verbally meddle and confront a careless, puerile youthful tourist, named Susan, who is attracted to the more foreboding side of the city's nightlife. In this designation story, Susan is quieted into innocent separated by her paradisiacal circumventions, lulled into poor, unsafe naïve culls. Kahakauwila closes her story on a dismal somber note, where the chorus, do to little too late of what would have been ideal, to the impairment of all. Stereotype, territorial, acceptance, and unity, delineates and depicts the circadian lives of Hawaiian native locals, and the relationships with the neglectful, candid tourists, all while investigating and exploring the pressure tension intrinsically in racial and class division, and the wide hole in recognition between the battle between the traditional Hawaiian societal culture and the cutting edge modern world infringing on its shores.
Teachers help us expand and open our mind by giving us skills throughout students’ early life to help students when they are older. By learning information from teachers, students become better people, in a couple of ways. Besides inquiring knowledge from their teachers, students learn to work with one another, open their mind to other peoples’ thoughts and ideas, respect one another, and learn different techniques for life’s issues.
A teacher today needs to have an ability to relate to and create partnerships not with their students, but also families, administrators and other professionals. This ensures that all persons involved with the education of the student are on the same page. All involved then work in harmony and help each other achieve the common goal of educating the student in the best possible way for the best possible result. (Wesley, 1998, p 80)
Narrative Essay It all started my sophomore year of high school. People always tell you that when someone knocks you down, you should always get back up and keep trying. I had this mindset at the beginning of my sophomore year, but I ended up letting a teacher knock me down to the point where I did not get back up for a couple of years. I never expected my second year of high school to go so awry.
Along these two weeks we have been prompt to make a recall to our own way of learning and why we became a teacher: Was it because coincidence, due to life circumstances, maybe because family tradition, was it a conscious decision or because someone influenced us? Whatever the answer is, we have to face reality and be conscious that being a teacher does not only means to teach a lesson and asses students learning. It requires playing the different roles a teacher must perform whenever is needed and required by our learners, identify our pupils needs and preferences, respecting their integrity and individuality but influencing and motivating them to improve themselves and become independent.