During her sophomore year at Punahou School in 2021, Marissa Halagao said, she wondered why her Asian studies class didn’t include more Filipino education and history. A second- generation Filipino American, Halagao began creating a unit about Filipino history and culture that she hoped would help her fellow students feel more connected and proud of their heritage.
As she began interviewing teachers from other schools and connecting with students across Oahu for her project, she said, she realized that many other Filipino youth felt the same way. Knowing that they shared similar experiences, the group of 11 high school students and recent graduates decided to band together to create the curriculum. They plan to present their proposal to the state Department of Education soon.
“Student voice is so important because we are fighting for the change that we want to see,” said Halagao, 17. “I can’t speak Tagalog or Ilocano fluently, so I just remember my whole childhood feeling so sad that I couldn’t. Doing this project has really helped us connect to our culture even more. Identity is really important.”
Dubbed the Filipino Curriculum Project, the initiative is student-driven and comprises 11 youth from six public and private schools: Punahou School, Kamehameha Schools, and Waipahu, Kapolei, Roosevelt and Farrington high schools. They are developing a public school semester course that is broken down into three units: historical context, culture and connections, and Filipinos in Hawaii. Halagao, who is now a junior at Punahou, said the overarching theme of the course is identity and empowerment.
Filipinos make up about 25% of Hawaii’s population, according to recent census data. That number reflects census respondents who identified as Filipino alone or in combination with other ethnicities.
To develop the curriculum, they have been meeting with teachers and community leaders to gain feedback on their ideas. They are also trying to create the units to meet certain social studies standards set by the state. A great resource to help them is Halagao’s mom, Patricia Halagao, who serves as chair of the Department of Curriculum Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s College of Education. The team has also met with DOE officials and lawmakers.
At the state Legislature, lawmakers recently introduced a resolution requesting that the DOE implement Filipino history, culture and identity curriculum in high schools. The resolution garnered support from several community leaders and was reported out of the House Education Committee on Thursday. Halagao and others from the Filipino Curriculum Project were among those who testified in support of the resolution. (Resolutions are nonbinding, which means it would not mandate the DOE to implement the curriculum.)
“Excluding the experiences and aspirations of Filipinos in the curriculum must be addressed. Hawaii students deserve a comprehensive, accurate and inclusive curriculum,” said Amy Agbayani, co-chair of the Hawaii Friends of Civil Rights, in written testimony. “I believe that our Filipino students and community want to know about heritage and history and that every student who takes this course will benefit. In addition to making the curriculum more accurate, it is an equity issue and an opportunity to increase appreciation and respect for all groups.”
The DOE said in written testimony that although the department recognizes the importance of Asia’s history, culture and identity, there are already several opportunities to study Filipino history and heritage in school.
But Caitlin Jayne Agnes, a 2021 Kapolei High graduate, said although she served as president of her school’s Filipino club, she still didn’t know much about her culture.
“It kind of made me feel lost saying I’m Filipino American.” said Agnes, 19. “The Philippines has so much history and how it relates to Hawaii. This project is so important to Filipinos because it brings a sense of identity to us.”
Although the curriculum is focused on Filipino heritage and history, Halagao and Agnes said they hope to inspire other youth who feel underrepresented to take action. The unit on culture and connections also looks at how Filipino culture connects to other ethnicities, they said.
They pointed out that their team is diverse and includes youth who, in addition to being Filipino, are also Japanese, Portuguese and Hawaiian, as well as others who grew up in the Philippines and came to the islands as kids.
“It is just so empowering in itself because we really created a family within our collaborator group. We really bonded over this,” Halagao said. “Our project is to empower Filipinos and help non-Filipinos connect to and learn about our community, and we hope to inspire other groups of students to advocate for their own representation.”
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Jayna Omaye covers ethnic and cultural affairs and is a corps member of Report for America, a national service organization that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
