Windows & Mirrors on the Lanai: Using Literature To Support Interdisciplinary, Place-Based Social Justice Education for K-5 Students in Hawai'i

Emily Style (1988) was instrumental in raising educators’ awareness of “the need for curriculum to function both as window and as mirror, in order to reflect and reveal most accurately both a multicultural world and the [unique world of each individual] student.” Today, the “windows and mirrors” metaphor remains relevant and essential to a modern-day progressive education. Students must be provided with both texts and learning activities that reflect their own identities and experiences ("mirrors") and those that give insight into lives very different from their own ("windows"). The elementary years are key for laying this critical educational foundation. As Rudine Sims Bishop (1990) explains, both fiction and non-fiction picture books are a great tool for early childhood educators who want to introduce young learners to the concepts of windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors in an effort to support positive identity formation and empathy-building. But what might this look like in Hawai‘i, specifically?

This workshop will connect educators with a living bibliography of Hawaiʻi-based multicultural texts for K-5 students. Participants will have the opportunity to review the texts and generate lesson ideas that use picture books and other resources to support hands-on, place-based, social justice learning in Hawai‘i. Led by 2024 Hawai‘i Social Justice Educator Award recipient Jess Sobocinski, this workshop will also provide participants with some examples of multidisciplinary lessons and units that Sobocinski has carried out with her first grade students. This will include walking participants through a lesson that integrates an outdoor, hands-on activity inspired by one of the books. This workshop will end with collaborative resource-sharing, reflection, and celebration!

WORKSHOP OBJECTIVES 

Participants will be able to:

1. Understand the essential role that place-based, culturally relevant literature can play in social justice education in Hawaiʻi.  
2. Find K-5 texts that they can read to their keiki to support positive identity formation and empathy formation. 
3. Use Hawaiʻi-based K-5 texts to lead place-based multidisciplinary lessons and/or activities with students.

WORKSHOP AGENDA

8:30-9:00 Opening & pilina-builder
9:00-9:30 Introducing Social Justice Education in Hawaiʻi
9:30-10:00 Examples of using Hawaiʻi-based texts in a 1st Grade Classroom
10:00-10:15 Break!
10:15-10:45 Hands-on, outdoor lesson/activity using a text as a launching point
10:45-11:00 Break!
11:00-11:45 Co-design lesson
11:45-12:00 Break, planning time, and/or time to peruse and/or add to bibliography
12:00-12:30 Closing

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR

Jess Sobocinski is an educator and researcher living in the ahupuaʻa of Kealakekua, Hawaiʻi Island. Originally from Portage, Indiana, she discovered her passion for education through work in food hubs, where she saw the potential of community gardens to foster healing and address social inequality. After serving as a garden kumu at Hōnaunau Elementary and earning her K-6 teaching license through Kahoʻiwai, Jess has worked in farm-to-school programs across Hawaiʻi Island for over a decade. As a graduate student in the MEd CS STEMS² program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, her research focused on using ʻāina-based education to promote social justice education in elementary schools, empowering students to recognize and address injustices while developing empathy and resilience. Jess is back at Hōnaunau Elementary, serving as a first grade general education teacher!

THIS WORKSHOP IS DESIGNED FOR

The resources and content of this workshop ARE geared toward K-5 classroom teachers, community educators, or ʻohana who work with/care for elementary-aged children.