People of the Pacific

Program

The People of the Pacific curriculum prepares students to be leaders within a variety of communities, careers, higher education institutions, and within families by focusing on the rich culture of the Pacific Island people throughout the course. The curriculum provided has been created by various POP teachers and administrators, the UVU School of Education, and the UVU Multicultural Student Services. Curriculum is subject to change, and will be continuously updated to better serve and reflect the needs of our K-12 Pacific Islander students.

Sea turtle on the beach

Suggested Lesson Plan for New Teachers

Correlated to the Common Core Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects 11th-12th grade.

* The section and lessons do not have to be taught in any particular order but there are some lessons that are dependent on previous lessons. Cultural activities/performances in the public school and/or tutoring is a part of the regular classroom curriculum. Lesson plans are provided for each essential question, and additional resources can be found in curriculum resources.

Term 1

Self, Family, Community

Essential Question:
Why should a Pacific Islander student know their culture?
Assessment:
Letter to your future family explaining why a Pacific Islander should know their culture.
Reading:
Teaching Students About Other Cultures...And Their Own(2014)
Common Core W4:
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Pacific Island Culture-Past and Present

Essential Question:
How do I understand my culture and teach it to others?
Assessment:
PowerPoint on Pacific-Islander cultural wealth to present to others.
Common Core R1:
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
Common Core W10:
Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

College, Career, and Financial Readiness

Essential Question:
Why do we have to take a variety of classes in high school?
Assessment #1:
Analyze and explain the purpose behind the Utah Scholars initiative.
Common Core R9:
Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.
Assessment #2:
Explain to younger students why it is important for younger students to see the variety of interviews available through the UVU Pacific Islander Initiative.
Common Core R2:
Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationship among the key details and ideas.

Leadership

Essential Question:
How can we find out who the Pacific Island leaders are, past and present?
Assessment:
Using media and family members as research resources, students will create a biography of a Pacific Island leader.
Common Core W7:
Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.

Critical Communications

Essential Question:
How do I respectfully speak out when everyone thinks differently than I do?
Assessment:
Fictional discussion with younger family member about the importance of being true to yourself and your culture among others who think differently.
Common Core W10:
Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Term 2

Self, Family, Community

Essential Question:
Why did my ancestors immigrate to Utah?
Assessment:
Recorded, oral synthesis, of family immigration to Utah.
Common Core W2:
Write information/explanatory texts, including the narration of historical events.

Pacific Island Culture-Past and Present

Essential Question #1:
Why is it important to understand Pacific Islander history both locally (Utah) and within Pacific Islands?
Assessment:
Write a newspaper article as to why Pacific-Islanders in Utah should remember the settlers of Iosepa, Utah.
Common Core W10:
Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.
Essential Question #2:
How does learning my native tongue impact my understanding of my heritage?
Assessment:
Vocabulary Acquisition Models with Pacific Island proverbs.
Common Core R4:
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including analyzing how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term over the course of a text.

College, Career, and Financial Readiness

Essential Question:
What are the views of education in my family?
Assessment:
Students discuss with a family elder what they perceive to be the views of the family on education and write a reflection about the experience.
Common Core W10:
Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Leadership

Essential Question #1:
How does my Pacific Islander culture help me become a good leader?
Assessment:
Students will write talking points to their Cultural Wealth PowerPoint (term 1) about the connection of cultural wealth to strong leadership.
Common Core W6:
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.
Essential Question #2:
What are my cultural strengths that are transferable to education and new contexts?
Assessment:
Students will write talking points to their Cultural Wealth PowerPoint (term 1) about the connection of cultural wealth to strong leadership.
Common Core W6:
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.

Critical Communications

Essential Question:
How do I negotiate family situations while meeting educational expectations?
Assessment:
Written advice to students in a research article.
Reading:
Alone and In Between Cultural and Academic Worlds: Voices of Samoan Students (2010)
Common Core W10:
Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Term 3

Self, Family, Community

Essential Question #1:
What are my personal goals and how will I meet them?
Assessment:
Goal chart with 3 overarching goals and subsets of those goals.
Common Core W10:
Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.
Essential Question #2:
What is my personal narrative?
Assessment:
Digital Story
Common Core W6:
Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.

Pacific Island Culture-Past and Present

Essential Question #1:
Why is Pacific Island Literature important?
Assessment:
Explain to a friend, who is not a Pacific Islander, why Pacific Island literature is important.
Common Core R9:
Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.
Essential Question #2:
How do we counteract the negative and false stereotypes of Pacific Islanders?
Assessment:
Students will review recent media pronouncements and re-write the media from a Pacific-Islander friendly perspective.
Common Core W5:
Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.

College, Career, and Financial Readiness

Essential Question #1:
How and why should a Pacific Islander student be college and career ready?
Assessment:
Students will create a presentation for their parents and/or younger students about why Pacific Islanders should be college and career ready by synthesizing what is published from various sources, videos, and their own CCR materials.
Common Core W8:
Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the strengths and limitations of each source in terms of the specific task, purpose, and audience; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and overreliance on any one source and following a standard format for citation.
Essential Question #2:
How can I prepare financially for college and the future?
Assessment:
Analyze and explain the purpose behind the financial section of the Utah Futures website.
Common Core R9:
Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.

Leadership

Essential Question:
What roles do I have in school and how can I use those in a positive way to influence change?
Assessment:
Students will write key points about the essential question within a bio-cube for themselves.
Common Core W10:
Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Critical Communications

Essential Question:
How does a Pacific Islander learn to effectively navigate between multiple cultures?
Assessment:
Students prepare interview questions for college students about navigating cultures and writes a synthesis of findings.
Common Core W10:
Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Term 4

Self, Family, Community

Essential Question:
How can I create the kind of family I want?
Assessment:
Family Mission Statement
Common Core W1:
Write an argument focused on discipline-specific content.

Pacific Island Culture-Past and Present

Essential Question:
How does understanding my own culture help me to navigate cultures of privilege?
Assessment:
Using the cultural wealth powerpoint from a previous lesson, students will explain how their cultural wealth can propel them towards successfully completing college.
Common Core W9:
Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

College, Career, and Financial Readiness

Essential Question:
Why is it important for me to be financially literate?
Assessment:
Summarize financial literacy class or if students have not taken it, have students interview the financial literacy teacher for a summary.
Common Core W10:
Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Leadership

Essential Question:
How can I, as a Pacific Islander leader, affect my community? (school, neighborhood, false stereotypes, institutions).
Assessment:
Written reflection about the essential question.
Common Core W10:
Write routinely over extended time frames and shorter time frames for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Critical Communications

Essential Question:
How do I come to a point where I know who I am, my successes, and who I can become?
Assessment:
Reflective Journal assessing personal narrative in terms of where student is now preparing for goals, family mission statement, and knowledge of culture.
Common Core W7:
Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.

Curriculum Resources

Self, Family, Community

Why is it important to learn about Pacific Islanders in multiple contexts? (various occupations, educational pathways, etc.)

What are my personal goals and how will I meet them?

How do I involve my family with my goals?

What is my family narrative?

What is my personal narrative?

What are my parents’ views of education?

Why should a PI student know their culture?

Why should a PI student know why their family immigrated to Utah?

How do I come to a point where I know who I am and who I can become?

How will I know, as PI, when I have achieved success?

How can I create the kind of family I want?

Pacific Island Culture-Past and Present

How do I understand my culture and teach it to others?

How does understanding my own culture help me navigate cultures of privilege?

Why is PI literature important?

How does learning my native tongue impact my understanding of my heritage?

How do we counteract the negative and false stereotypes of Pacific Islanders?

Why is it important to understand Pacific Islander history both locally (Utah) and within Pacific Islands?

How does a PI student learn to effectively navigate between multiple cultures?

College, Career, and Financial Readiness

Why do we have to take courses in high school that aren’t any fun?

What are my cultural strengths that are transferrable to education, careers, and new contexts?

What roles do I have in school and how can I use those in a positive way to influence change?

How and Why should a PI student be college and career ready?

Leadership in varied communities

How does my Pacific Islander culture help me become a good leader?

Why is learning how to be a leader important?

How can I as a Pacific Islander leader affect my community? (school, neighborhood, institutions)

How can we find out who the PI leaders are past and present?

How do I feel comfortable speaking out when everyone thinks differently than I do?

How can I prepare financially for college and the future?

Why is it important to be financially literate?

How can education be a vehicle for me to affect change within a system that expects failure?

Critical Communications

How do I communicate to my elders what is important to me?

How do we discover the possibility for multiple realities for Pacific Islanders?

How do I negotiate family situations while meeting educational expectations?

What are my cultural strengths that are transferrable to education and new contexts?

How can I communicate effectively with my elders while maintaining cultural respect?

Paid for in part by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. However, the contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

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