But the reflective moments we had before meeting Aldrin describe how and why language is a vital component of international education. I'll start there, because I want to explain how our shared experience on the Micronesian island of Pohnpei earlier this summer continues to inspire me to amplify learner-centered perspectives in international education through the #languagestory project.
It was a hot, humid morning in June when I met up with James and Joey at their homestay in Sokehs. As a project manager experienced in field ethnography, my goal was to encourage and guide them in the video recording of their first major data set. Lucky for us, and typical for the island, their host family had a huge nahs [read: gnaws], or shaded outdoor meeting area, with its signature raised platform and open air seating. The nahs captured all of the cool breezes and made for the perfect place to listen to a local storyteller.
Our Field School was all about providing hands-on experience in data collection with real people with real stories, living in communities distinguished by their unique values and endangered languages. In the spirit of language preservation, we were collaborating with community leaders, elders, and parents to record poignant folklore and annotate foundational vocabulary and grammar for sorting and storage in an online, public repository, or Talking Dictionary. That day in June, we found ourselves working one-on-one with speakers of Pingelap, as I guided our team in setting up their equipment, formulating questions, and above all, listening closely to our willing participants.
As it turned out, the nahs was only our starting point. And as we gathered there, with our recording equipment out, listening to and recording the stories of Helliew, an acclaimed Pingelapese storyteller, we began to attract a small crowd. Children at first, and then a couple of teenagers. It would be these one of these teens, Sean, host brother to James and Joey, who would lead us to Aldrin and the story of Mwas.
Reflections on Listening to Stories in Pingelap
After our fascinating and entertaining time with Helliew (more later about him!), the teenagers offered to take us around, because by then, they knew we were in search of stories. As we began walking down the road, I took the opportunity to talk with Joey first, and then James, about their ongoing experience in practicing and acquiring methods in field research.
"I think there's a big difference between doing an interview with your classmates, and like, doing it with a real speaker, and actually with a semi-language gap. I learned a lot about how to, you know, kind of frame questions in a way that make it lot more accessible to the interviewee." - Joey
The responses of my research team really encouraged me to continue thinking from the bottom up about international education. As a result, I am pondering these questions:
"This is unlike anything I've ever done before, just going out to a place that I've never been, and talking to people that I've never talked to before or know about. I feel like I'm still learning a lot, and especially with interviewing, it's easy to just treat the subject being interviewed as, you know, somebody that's giving you information.
Storytelling is central to the human condition. It is how we encode culture in our communities, and share ideas, new and old. Every folktale on the island seemed to begin with Mas mas, and these were stories that had no set time or end. They were just forever there, because they were origin stories, and eternal in their nature.
As it turned out, the Pingelap story of the giant eel was really about a masculine eel who was the brunt of everyone's jokes. No one thought he was much of a man (go figure!), or that he could save the ancient community described in the folktale as the first of the Pingelapese. But in the end, Mwas or Mwasaman, did, and he succeeded in defending everyone on the island from cannibals at sea. Ultimately, he married a bride of his own choosing.
I'll be sure to detail the full story of Mwas later on here, but for now, I am comforted by thinking of this eel-man as the underdog, and of my students as determined eel-people out in the world, learning from each other, supported by opportunities to bridge cultural divides through language and linguistics.