UH Hilo English students use their writing and analytical skills to lead book drive for local nonprofit
Working with a small budget, students in three English classes analyzed, wrote proposals, selected and purchased children’s books to be donated to Tūtū and Me, a local nonprofit for keiki.
By Lauren Aoki and Susan Enright for UH Hilo Stories.
English students at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo steered a project this spring to help rescue a community program with looming federal budget cuts. The student-led book drive for beneficiary Tūtū and Me, a local nonprofit focused on early childhood education with a strong literacy component, is the brainchild of Lauri Sagle, an English instructor at UH Hilo’s English department for over 20 years who teaches introductory courses.
“By doing a book donation drive we could also accomplish some useful outcomes: Students would read, assess, and choose children’s books to donate to a fabulous local organization, Tūtū and Me, and they would get a specific kind of writing experience, along with genuinely helpful participation in a community project,” says Sagle, who started the book drive as a pilot project with her three English 100 classes.
Tūtū and Me Traveling Preschool provides free parenting and caregiver support to ʻohana (family) with keiki under the age of five. It’s a traveling preschool active on four Hawaiʻi islands, offering developmentally appropriate education that includes literacy activities at community-based locations such as parks and community centers. In a powerful place-based policy, kids cannot be dropped off at sessions; their caregiver must actively participate in each activity.
“We want to make sure parents are the child’s first and foremost teacher,” says Amanda Ishigo, Tūtū and Me project director who recently came to the UH Hilo campus to personally share her organization’s work with the three English classes whose project has given an inspirational boost to the nonprofit.
Created in 2001 with support from the nonprofit Partners in Development Foundation, the mission of Tūtū and Me dovetails nicely with some of the core foundational values at UH Hilo: Lessons are based on experiential learning and cultural identity, which include Hawaiian vocabulary and an emphasis on personal connection to ʻohana, ʻāina, and kūpuna. Many activities focus on native species, such as the kāhuli tree snail. The Tūtū and Me library prioritizes books from Hawaiʻi.
Since its founding with just one van at one church, Tūtu and Me has served over 21,000 keiki and 32,000 caregivers across the state of Hawaiʻi, now boasting a total of 24 preschools with locations on Kauaʻi, Molokaʻi, Oʻahu, and Hawaiʻi Island, including four East Hawaiʻi centers. While other services at Tutu and Me include developmental screenings and assessments, community service referrals, home-visits, and online classes, the UH Hilo English classes zeroed in on the literacy education work supported by books.
English students to the rescue with a book drive
Tūtu and Me has been largely financially supported by the U.S. Department of Education Native Hawaiian Education Program. However, under recent federal cuts and changes, the program is now in danger of being cut in half. Of Tūtū and Me’s current 24 preschools, an estimated 50 percent are expected to close due to widespread budget cuts.
This heartbreaking development was brought to the attention of Sagle, who sprang into action with a community-oriented assignment — more of a project — for her students that also seemed like a fun release at the end of the semester: A book drive for Tūtū and Me with strong components of research and writing for the university students.
“We had a small budget for each class that enabled us to assess, select, vote on, and buy kids’ books that we would then donate to Tūtū and Me, a logically wonderful recipient since one of the many ways they operate is as a traveling pre-school, serving kids 0-5,” says Sagle.
The English classes amassed piles of children’s books (some from Basically Books in Hilo) that students ranked, along with others they suggested independently or discovered through their tour of the three areas at UH Hilo Mookini Library with children’s books, including, importantly, the Hawaiian Collection that includes several in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language).
Students then wrote a proposal advocating for their book choice (hence learning another type of writing) while also learning about literacy in Hawaiʻi and the Tūtū and Me program.
Postcards to Mayor Alameda: Support Tūtū and Me!
The English classes’ project became a lot more urgent as they began reading in the press about Tūtū and Me’s impending federal defunding. That’s when they began exercising their “Right to Write” postcards to Hawaiʻi Island Mayor Kimo Alameda requesting county-level support for Tūtū and Me.
“The students have written postcards that are kind and thoughtful, and some even show a direct connection to the program,” says Sagle. “Our English majors also picked up their pens and wrote postcards to add to the stack.”
This plea to the mayor is made all the more powerful because four students in the university English classes identified themselves as former preschoolers at Tūtū and Me.
It’s at this point in the project that Tūtū and Me Project Director Ishigo visited campus on May 5 to speak with the students. Sagle’s three English classes were invited to attend.
“Amanda’s class presentation was brilliant, compassionate, inclusive, fun, and brought Tūtū and Me even further into our hearts,” says Sagle.
At the event, Ishigo talked about Tūtū and Me placing a strong emphasis on literacy for early education.
“Literacy is more than just reading. It’s speech, it’s listening skills, it’s reading and writing,” she explains, noting the curriculum is curated to best prepare keiki for success and provide early educational opportunities they may otherwise not have. She says Tūtū and Me wants to prepare young minds for success now and for many years into the future. Even long after kids grow past the program’s age limit, Tūtu and Me hopes to leave a lasting mark on its students’ ongoing development.
“Our whole focus is how do we set up for success? How do we make something long-lasting? That’s our underlying heart under everything we do,” says Ishigo. “All of the families that come to us, we want to make sure that’s the root of what we teach.”
60 books delivered to Tūtū and Me!
For the last part of this project, the UH Hilo English students wrote inspirational notes to stick into the new books that had been purchased and brought to class on their last day of the semester.
Then came the full fruition of the project.
“I delivered 60 books, accompanied by the students’ handwritten notes, on Thursday, May 14 to Tūtū and Me,” says Sagle. “We’d also accumulated about the same number of postcards that I handed over to Tūtū and Me, to be sent to Mayor Alameda. Other postcards are still being sent independently because I won’t stop talking about, or believing in, Tūtū and Me.”
Story by Lauren Aoki, who graduated this spring with a degree in English and a minor in anthropology at UH Hilo, and Susan Enright, public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of UH Hilo Stories.
